


The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder

by zombiejelly



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Basement!Gerard Only Without The Basement, Chernobyl Shit, Creepy, Dark Stuff, Fluff, Frank Is A Little Shit, M/M, No We Are Not In Another Post-Apocalyptic AU, Paranormal, There's A Lot of Mystery Going On
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiejelly/pseuds/zombiejelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe it's the vibrancy of the colors that told Gerard something was wrong.</p>
<p>Perhaps the mundaneness just seemed too gleamy, and the silence too revealing- the fact that there were so many things untold, secluded- it all seemed like a giant spider web he caught himself in while the predator was out on a hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Thoughts Belong In The Gutter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babyboyblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyboyblues/gifts), [mindchemicals](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindchemicals/gifts).



> _Maybe it's the vibrancy of the colors that told Gerard something was wrong.  
>    
>  Perhaps the mundaneness just seemed too gleamy, the silence too revealing- the fact that there were so many things untold, secluded- it all seemed like a giant spider web he caught himself in while the predator was on another hunt.  
>    
>  _ Gerard doesn't have a good feeling about this.  
>    
>  His idea of a great life has nothing to do with creepy little towns the world had forgotten a long time ago. He isn't sure what his ideal would be, though, but he'd gladly settle for ratty New York suburbs, even something incredibly sunny- Arizona, maybe- if it meant that he wouldn't have to rot off the best years of his life in a shitty little place like the one his mother picked out for them.  
>    
>  It's not really a matter of teenage rebellion, not anymore. He just feels incredibly wrong about this.  
>    
>  The back seat of the old Chevy is much more comfortable when Gerard isn't feeling jittery. His earphones are blasting music he'd usually find some salvation in, but Jarvis Cocker's vocal chords aren't helping this situation at all. He feels so hopeless he might as well bang his head against the car window. Being cut off of any form of actual, living civilization probably wouldn't be as tragic if the landscape wasn't giving him the creeps. He's read way too many ghost stories to know oddly normal things are the most dangerous ones, and his knowledge of classic horror flicks only confirms that fact further.  
>    
>  The worst part of it all is that the town is filled with abandoned shit- so many shacks, buildings nobody wants to go in, and stuff like old warehouses wherever your eyes might linger for long enough to notice. It's nothing surprising, not really, since the place used to be a part of a large industrial district back in the sixties. That period is over now, and all that's left is basically a shell of a small, once pretty town.  
>  But still, it heavily reeks of the notion that it's also the perfect place to get brutally murdered in.  
>    
>  Although, Gerard can find a strange comfort in the fact the entire town is so fucking...  _beautiful_. It emits that vibe only Silent Hill can give you, but there's so much more to hold on to. There's this patch of air surrounding the place, as if it's dusk the entire time and all Gerard can think of is the way the forest looks like a bloody scrape of skin littered with rust.  
>    
>  It smells like tension here, he concludes, letting the soles of his shoes touch the ground of this place for the first time. The wind is warm, but the sky is clear and Gerard instinctively wraps his hoodie tighter around himself. He doesn't like the wind; it always feels like it's invading his privacy.  
>    
>  The house sheltering him away from the orange sunset is cream-colored, with a brown, hipped roof that makes it feel like it belongs somewhere in the mountains rather than a shitty little town in the middle of nowhere. Its windows are large, with wooden sills, the front door smaller than he's used to- but it doesn't really make a difference, it's not like Gerard is tall enough to worry about that.  
>    
>  All in all, it looks like a home; Gerard's just not sure if it's the right one for him.  
>    
>  His mother's hair matches the color of the burnt umber that is the hallway, and her hand is flailing around dramatically as she's ordering him which box to put where. She started looking fifteen years younger as soon as they'd passed the 'Welcome to Redwood' road sign, and that's probably the only thing keeping him from losing his mind at the moment.  
>    
>  "Gerard," she calls, "you're spacing out again."  
>    
>  Gerard blinks a few times, his eyes focusing on her face. "Sorry."  
>    
>  Her eyebrow is up for a few more seconds, dark and defined, the sharp edge carving into her skin. But then she grabs the box out of Gerard’s hands and puts it onto the ground, placing her hand on Gerard’s back and gently stroking the unhealthy curve of his spine. Her face turns softer, the tiny wrinkles smoothing out and showing nothing but sympathy now. "I know this is hard for you. But it's for the better- and the sooner you accept that, the better our life here will be."  
>    
>  And Gerard is really grateful he's taller than his mother, because his face fits perfectly when buried into her shoulder.  
>    
>  *  
>    
>  The room he claimed for himself is nothing special, but Gerard likes it. There’s just enough wall space to put all his posters up, plenty of storage room for books, records, movies, clothes- he even likes the order the furniture is in. The desk in the corner is massive, and the huge bed he’ll be sleeping on smells nice, like flowers and just a little bit of dust. The sheets are dark purple and pretty thick, and the thought of curling up underneath them on stormy nights makes him feel just a little bit calmer about this entire situation.  
>  He’s already put his alarm clock on the night stand, along with an Obi-Wan figurine and a picture of himself holding his little brother a few days after their mother gave birth to him. He thinks those things belong there, and having them so close to him make him feel secure; less anxious about the future this place has in store for him.  
>    
>  The paint on the walls looks old, but it’s gray and Gerard doesn’t want to redo it since the pattern time has left on it is intricate- it kind of looks like someone ran their fingers through the paint while it was still drying. The wardrobe is the size of a mountain and made out of black wood, with large, copper knobs attached to it at the front, and Gerard feels as if it’s calling him and begging for him to paint some baby’s breath onto it.  
>    
>  It rains that night, incredibly soft, and when Gerard plays Joy Division really quietly it all feels like a movie from the eighties.  
>    
>  He doesn’t know what to do, his head is switched to vegetating mode and he can’t seem to grasp on a thought for long enough to ponder over it. He’s tired, but not tired enough, as it seems- his body’s aching for sleep but he feels like he’s on a brain-high; over-energized but with nothing to spend it on. He can watch television, or grab a hot shower, but he has no motivation to leave the bed he’s currently sprawled on. He knows he still hasn’t finished reading the book he’s started a few days ago, nor the coal sketch of David Bowie he’s been working on for weeks now- but he knows that if he touches any of that he’ll end up pulling an all-nighter.  
>    
>  His joints hurt because he’s spent too much time still today, his neck sore from the weird position he slept in back when they were on the road and all he wants is to sleep all of his pain and frustration off.  
>    
>  He has no idea how he manages, but when the clock strikes one AM and he’s still not blacking out, he stumbles down the stairs and into the living room. He can see that his mother’s unpacked most of their stuff and that everything looks relatively in order, which explains the fact she’s passed out on the couch with the TV still on.  
>    
>  “Gerard?” he hears as he’s about to go looking for her bag. “What are you still doing up?”  
>    
>  He sighs. “I can’t sleep. I came here to look for some Ambien.”  
>    
>  She groans, blowing her hair out of her eyes and switching her position on the couch. “It’s in the side pocket of my bag,” she says, muffled. “You know I hate it when you take those pills. I’ll pick up some melatonin from the pharmacy for you tomorrow.”  
>  Gerard utters to resist, but she cuts him off. “Save it.”  
>    
>  He sighs bitterly, but nods, taking one pill out swiftly and putting it inside his hoodie pocket as he’s switching the TV off for his mother. He wishes her a good night and climbs back upstairs.  
>    
>  He leans against the cold window sill in his room and grabs his smokes from the desk, retrieving the last one before throwing the pack into the bin beside his bed. He gets his lighter from the back pocket of his jeans and puffs the cigarette out into the wet air in front of him, inhaling deeply.  
>    
>  As the cherry runs south, he looks into the dark green of the night, frowning at how ungracefully the piss-yellow of the street lighting kisses the cracked asphalt of the sidewalk. The street itself looks clean, almost too clean, and he can swear that it seems as if nobody’s ever dared to stomp on a chewing gum around this place. The trees around the house look violet, while they’re red under the sunlight and it’s pretty- slightly unnerving, but pretty.  
>    
>  At one moment Gerard realizes his fingers feel baked and he stubs his cigarette out against the outer part of the sill, cursing on the burn that appeared on his index finger and flicking the butt somewhere indefinite. He can feel a gust of wind flowing through the air as he’s about to shut the blinds and he shoots another look at the street, for no apparent reason.  
>    
>  He thinks that the large, glossy black stains on the road are a rather strange occurrence, when only minutes ago the entire street was painfully clean, but he waves it off and blames it on his head, swallowing the pill from his pocket dry. He strips off of his jeans and hoodie, turning the table lamp off and stuffing his head into the pillow.  
>    
>  If anything, at least he can hope that his life in this place won’t be as horrifying as the nightmares Ambien gives him every goddamn time. His mother’s right, he really should consider melatonin as an alternative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to 'spooktastic adventures straight from the glittery gutter' *throws rubber bats at you*
> 
> i am iva and i'll be guiding you through this journey of incredibly predictable storylines and badly written gore scenes. i hope you'll enjoy. [who am i even writing this for lmao]
> 
> hopefully, we'll meet frank in the next chapter. hopefully.


	2. It's An Emotional Stutter

The next week, it rains heavily.  
  
Gerard's mother insists on him taking the Chevy to town, but he refuses. He likes the rain, he owns an umbrella, and he's pretty sure his feet will stay dry if the laces on his docs are tied firm enough. The clouds have a sepia vibe to them while Gerard's jeans are black, just like the rest of his clothing, and he can't help but to feel as if this entire thing were framed. He feels comfortably trapped, way too used to his surroundings even though they're completely new and unfamiliar- it's unsettling, really, the smell of dirt entices him too much.  
  
The October air is hung over him rather tightly, and his hair is already catching a glimpse of the moist. He knows his roots are probably showing, contrasting rat-brown against the raven, but he pays it no mind as he's walking towards the giant, gloomy building that is the library. His ankles feel sore since his shoes still aren't used to the ground of this place, and he can't help but to wonder if it's a good thing that he isn't following.  
  
The door is visibly old and crooked in a few places, the creak reverberating across the floor ungracefully. Gerard frowns as he's closing it behind himself, shutting his umbrella before he pushes it into the bin beside the entrance. He pulls his earphones out and turns the music off, sloppily crossing the distance between himself and the counter.  
  
The walls in the room are old, the paint chipped and the concrete broken in a few random places. The ceiling is high and the windows round, with thick bronze sills and stained panes blocking the rain from falling in. The bookshelves are all made out of dark wood, stretching out into heights Gerard would never climb, not even for a book.  
  
"Can I help you?" the dark-haired girl from behind the counter asks, leaning against the surface and smiling politely. Her eyes are on Gerard and he suddenly feels like he's suffocating- it's been too long since he'd done this last.  
  
"Uh," he mutters, picking himself up, "yes, actually."  
  
She raises both of her eyebrows, face soft, and waits for him to form a coherent sentence.  
  
"I'd like to be a member here," he says finally, and she smiles at the way his cheeks flush dark red from awkwardness.  
  
"Certainly," she smiles. "I'll need your name, age and address. A contact number isn't mandatory, but it's best if you provide one if you have it. Just in case, you know?"  
  
*  
  
Gerard's fingers feel damp when he grabs a copy of 'The Alchemist' and strolls down the aisle of books, his docs thudding across the thick, wooden floor. The room smells like ancient oak and rotting paper combined with something sugary, something only dated books can provide. Perhaps disintegration can taste as sweet with books as it can with humans.  
  
The library is almost empty, and the sound of the rain pouring down from the sky is echoing deep across the hallways. Gerard's shoulders are heavy as he's pacing towards one of the secluded corners, looking for the letter O, and he almost trips over someone who's sitting on the floor, their back against the bookcase with their knees pulled in. They're rather small, and Gerard feels relieved for a moment since he's saved from awkwardly asking them to move so he could pass through.  
  
He knows his footsteps are loud contrasting the silence in the air, but the person doesn't flinch even when Gerard accidentally drops the book he was trying to grab from the shelf. He curses on his clumsiness and quickly grasps the decaying paper that hit the floor only seconds ago, his hands trembling a little from the anxiety. It's rather sad how people can make his nerves burn just by their presence, and not even acknowledging his- he feels pathetic only thinking about it.  
  
He notices that this part of the library is noticeably colder than the other- even though there's no logic in the fact whatsoever- but it's okay, since his face is probably heated enough to keep the entire town warm for a while.  
  
His chest still feels clogged when he turns around to walk away, tripping over his own feet. He nearly makes a run for it, but messily bumps into the girl from the counter after a few steps and almost falls over her. Thankfully, his arms don't fail him this time and the two books he's hugging don't abandon his lap, leaving him to heave a sigh of relief.  
  
“Shit, sorry,” she smiles up at him, apologetic. “You okay? You look like you might start screaming bloody murder any minute now.”  
  
Gerard stammers for a while and blushes extensively, just muttering incoherent words, but then inhales sharply and nods to himself, firm. He’s got this. “Yeah. All good. No problem.”  
  
“You’re cute,” she giggles at him like he’s four again and his grandma caught him stealing her chocolate from the kitchen cupboard.  
He is about to mumble something and embarrass himself even more than he already has, but the girl’s attention immediately focuses on something behind him. “Oh, Frank, don’t sit on that cold-ass floor. You’ll get yourself sick.”  
  
“Leave me be,” is muttered from the position on the floor. The voice is low, and seemingly agitated- but still somehow indifferent, like he was annoyed but still too nonchalant to do anything about it.  
  
To emphasize his point, ‘Frank’ turns the page of his book loudly, making the girl whose name Gerard still hasn’t learned roll her eyes.  
  
“You’re such a bitch,” she grins and walks over to him, ruffling his hair before heading down the narrow hallway of bookshelves. Gerard stands still, looking at the way the stranger’s unruly hair is poking out in weird directions now that it’s been messed up, as he huffs and focuses back onto his book. Gerard is sort of transfixed, and he isn’t sure why- there’s probably something alluring about people who are so entranced by the thing they’re doing that everything around them disappears.  
  
And he doesn’t know how long it’s been, but the stranger’s face is suddenly on better display and his eyes are wandering all over Gerard- and he doesn’t appreciate the attention. It’s ripping, just like any other, because Gerard is awkward and always messes up any form of communication- whether it’s the lady from the supermarket, someone who randomly asked for directions on the street or the sub guy who taught him Algebra in freshman year of high school.  
He’s suddenly even colder, and his arms seem frozen in place just like his entire body does as he tries to move, at least an inch. He hates being caught staring.  
  
“What?” the stranger asks and Gerard can’t seem to find his mouth, or his throat, or any words to answer that question with.  
  
So he gives up after a few moments of holding that questioning look the guy is giving him, and he runs off.  
  
*  
  
That night, he feels watched.  
  
It’s like a shadow crept underneath his doorstep and into all four of his bedposts, keeping him awake and chasing away the nightmares about to come. His mother still hasn’t bought that melatonin.  
He waits for the pill to begin to work, but it doesn’t, and it’s strange. He’s pretty sure he’s taken it, and swallowed it- maybe God just doesn’t want him to sleep tonight.  
  
He feels restless, so he scratches at his wrist a lot, it might even bruise since he’s doing it quite brutally- his grandma used to say that he should probably see someone because of that.  
  
It’s not a chilly night, so he keeps his window open and lets the dew stain his sills. He supposes he likes these calm, quiet hours of the morning- they make him think he might feel like one soon enough. His mind is racing back to the scene at the library, and he feels a pang of shame hit his upper gut as he remembers the way he just stormed off clumsily, barely even saying ‘goodbye’ to the girl from behind the counter. He’s lived in this town for nearly a week now, and he’s already got two people weirded out by his below-minimum level social skills. Way to go, moron, he thinks.  
  
The door to his room opens, and his mother’s head peeks in. He jolts, startled, but soon sighs and tries to steady his heartbeat as she gets closer to his spot on the bed.  
  
“Can’t sleep,” she explains, straightening the cushion against the wall and leaning against it. She sneaks a hand in Gerard’s hoodie pocket and grabs his pack of smokes. “Only one.”  
  
“It’s cool,” he tries to smile, and motions for her to light him one, too.  
  
“I’ve been listening to the local radio station earlier,” she says as she tucks the cigarette between his lips, “and they interviewed some guy whose cattle got, like, brutally slaughtered last night. An entire herd of cows. It happens a lot ‘round here, apparently.”  
  
Gerard all but snorts, driving the newly inhaled smoke right into his skull. He coughs a little, and says, “Are there wolves around here? Or does a rich family of vegetarian vampires inhabit the area? By the looks of this place, the chances are pretty slim for the former.”  
  
She punches his arm lightly, chuckling, “Oh, shut up. You’re right, though. No wolves. Or bears, for that matter. There’s practically nothing of that sort, that’s why people thought it would be great to breed cattle here.” She breathes out, and a cloud of smoke travels towards the ceiling. “Joke’s on them.” He hums, suspicious, waiting for her to continue her thought. “The guy also said that there were random splotches of, like, black everywhere. Oil tar, or something- really thick and sticky, all over the remainders of the poor creatures.”  
  
Gerard frowns thoughtfully, taking a drag. “That’s some hardcore 'Silence of The Lambs' bullshit right there.”  
  
She nods to herself, even though she knows he can’t see the gesture. He can hear the sound of her cigarette dropping into the glass of water next to his bed. He passes her his own, and she takes the last drag before chucking it next to hers in the glass. A few moments pass merely in silence, but then she notices the library books Gerard dropped on his nightstand earlier. “You got ‘The Alchemist’ again? Jesus, child, do you not know of any writer except for Lovecraft?”  
  
He rolls his eyes, smiling to himself. “Shush yourself.” He sighs, then, “I came off as a total weirdo in the library, though. No wonder I have no friends.”  
  
She sneaks her fingers across his scalp, removing the stray strands of hair and sliding them behind his ear. “What happened?” she asks.  
  
“Stuttered a lot, tripped a lot.  _Stared a lot_ ,” he huffs bitterly. “I wish someone punched in the face right there and then.”  
  
“Was it  _staring at cute guys_  staring, or was it  _spacing out and accidentally focusing my eyes on your boobs_  staring?” she queries, stealing another one of his cigarettes.  
  
“More of the second one,” he sighs.  
  
“So he wasn’t cute?” she teases, and he flips her off casually.  
  
“Didn’t really see him properly,” he admits.  
  
She sighs, “Oh, well.” She puts the stick into Gerard’s mouth, making him yelp, but nod in thanks anyway. “You can finish it, I’m calling it a day.”  
  
“Sweet dreams,” he smiles as she kisses his cheek.  
  
“To you, too. Don’t stay up for too long. School night, remember?”  
  
“Don’t remind me,” he whines, dramatically throwing his hand in the air while trying not to ash everywhere. He manages, surprisingly, and takes a violent drag as she’s closing the door.  
  
Those sleeping pills better start working soon, he thinks.  
  
*  
  
Apparently, the school isn’t really large.  
  
It has these massive auburn doors and yellow brick walls, with a dark red roof and thick ebony sills that stretch out all around the building which, in itself, isn’t really tall; rather bungalow-ish, actually, but still wide and welcoming in its entirety.  
  
His hands feel sweaty as he enters the Chemistry classroom, and the teacher must’ve noticed his trembling, since he didn’t bother to make him introduce himself. Gerard is pretty thankful for that. Such a shame that he isn't going to use that metaphorical grave he's dug out for himself last night hoping he'd get publicly humiliated enough just to drop inside and have an eternal nap.  
  
He’s invited to sit down beside a hippie boy with a wide smile and a head full of soft brown curls. He doesn’t catch his name, the guy doesn’t talk a lot- but his vibe is enough to make Gerard’s head spin just a little bit less than it has since he’s woken up this morning. It’s relaxing, really- having someone bright beside you makes breathing a whole lot easier in general.  
  
He’s probably spacing out too much during the entire time, though, and the guy notices that, so he’s the one to shake him out of his trance as the bell rings.  
  
“Hey, wake up. What do you have second period?” he offers kindly, and Gerard dies just a little bit inside- nice people truly are a blessing. "I'm Ryan, by the way."  
  
“Uh,” he blinks, trying to call the picture of his timetable back into his memory. “English, I think.” Then he recoils, and bites his lip awkwardly. "Oh, and- Gerard."  
  
Another smile spreads across Ryan's face, a bigger one this time, “Cool. I can take you there, if you’d want?”  
  
A corner of Gerard’s mouth twitches upwards, and he finds himself picking his books up clumsily. “Yeah, uh... I think I'd like that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, friends. *hi-fives all 2 of you*
> 
> i'm kind of on the edge about this chapter, it's not exactly the best i can do but meh. i'm recovering from a pretty hectic writer's block, so i guess it's fine concerning the circumstances. i got my guitar taken away today because my dad says i don't do anything else- [not even write, for that matter! so i suppose one good thing came out of it] i feel the teenage punk ready-to-kick-your-ass vibe deep within me. i'll snag it back tomorrow, anyway, so whatever.
> 
> the next update should be up sooner than this one, since this was as delayed as it was mostly due to an already mentioned writer's block, and sickness- i get zombified and bedridden like twice a month i swear to god- but no promises.


	3. Scrutiny Is A Sin

The paint on the walls of the corridor is chipped and burgundy, but the familiar hue isn't making Gerard any less anxious, or comfortable for that matter.  
  
He's staring at the backs of Ryan's moccasins, following him towards the cafeteria. The air is thick but he is cold anyway, and he can feel a few loose threads of his sweater sticking against his bitten fingernails as he's pulling the sleeves further over his palms. He’s slightly nauseous, but it’s only because of the stress, and the rain that’s threatening to spill from the clouds outside is the only thing keeping his mind in a relative state of calm. He doesn’t like the sun, he feels like it could burn that little pinch of sanity he’s got left in his brain.  
  
It's hard to breathe, but focusing only on Ryan and not the entire hallway of students is keeping him on a nearly safe distance from a panic attack. The lobby is cold with a crude stone floor and his head is down, so the fact that he gets lost in his thoughts for a moment, bumping into the first person to walk beside him, doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. He stutters out a ‘sorry’ as the girl waves him off and pushes past him nonchalantly, while Ryan glances at him with an encouraging nod to keep walking. It feels just slightly degrading, since Gerard has always been the one to look after his pride a little bit too much, but he’s seen a lot worse so he doesn’t mind. Kindness and pity aren’t destined to mix, he reminds himself.  
  
“Chin up, nobody’s going to hurt you,” Ryan offers, brushing his arm carefully. Gerard flinches on reflex and Ryan recoils, “Sorry.” His face is glowing with guilt and Gerard doesn’t like that, it makes him want to punch himself in the face.  
  
“No, it’s cool,” Gerard mumbles insecurely. “I’m, uh, _twitchy_ , I suppose.”  
  
“I get it,” Ryan smiles. It’s slightly surreal how Ryan’s words work like anxiety medication, but it’s understandable, since all of his brightness is bound to affect Gerard’s overall darkness in one way or another.   
  
When they get to the door, he shudders a bit, realizing just how many people there are in that single, badly-lit room. The thunder from outside is loud and making him abandon any wish he previously had for a smoke, while his knees feel weak just from glancing through the thin glass dividing him and the cafeteria. He looks at Ryan, but he doesn’t wait, so he opens the door and holds it for him. His lips twitch in a somewhat grateful gesture, and Ryan closes it after they walk into what Gerard considers to be his own, personal version of hell. There’s something pulling him back, appearing inside his gut and all across his body, towards the insides of his elbows, and it makes him feel like Ryan is going to walk away any second now and leave him there to decompose on the cold floor while everybody’s watching.  
  
He doesn’t, though, and even though Gerard almost loses him he’s still there, fixing his floral headband and smiling at him from a few meters away. It’s only when Gerard comes over to him that he realizes that he’s talking to someone, a girl sitting at the table in front of him. Gerard feels alarmed for a second, but his heart rate immediately slows down when he recognizes the freckled, pale cheekbones, choppy black hair and familiar dark brown eyes of the librarian he’s met just yesterday.  
  
“So, uh, Gerard- this is my friend, Jamia,” Ryan motions at the girl, who just smirks knowingly as Gerard is biting is lip and trying not let his embarrassment show on his face. The tension is thin but it’s crawled all the way down to his lungs, and he’s pretty sure no one by him is feeling it. “Am I missing something here?”  
  
“We met at the library yesterday,” she grins wickedly, but it’s not mean, just teasing and Gerard appreciates it at that moment more than he does the fact nobody else in the room is paying attention to them. It’s a little unnerving, because both Ryan and Jamia seem to be somehow out of the ordinary dynamic of the general student body in this school- but it’s also keeping him at ease in the sense that he supposes he might not seem so off after all here. He’s not sure what he’s thinking, he’s kind of disoriented, but he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be continuing her thought just about now.  
  
“I, uh, tripped a lot,” he giggles nervously, “but that’s kind of old news. I’m a very disoriented human being.”  
  
“Sit down, then,” Ryan nudges him gently, as if he’d break if he pushed rougher than that. Gerard appreciates it, it makes him feel safe. “Wouldn’t want you to trip over air and fall.”  
  
And when Jamia starts laughing at the gesture, offering him some of her chips and starting a conversation like they were nothing less than old friends catching up, the room starts feeling warmer even though he’s sure the heating is off. It’s what makes him think he’s somehow bound to be there, and perhaps that’s all he really needs- someone to help him feel normal again.  
  
*  
  
Gerard’s head feels heavy as he plops down onto the couch beside his mother on a Thursday afternoon. He’s already flung his backpack somewhere in the hallway along with his jacket, his docs filthy from the mud and dirt outside. He hates walking to school so much that he’d rather live further away from town just so he could ride the bus, especially since the area is constantly under attack of rain and generally bad weather. It’s kind of weird, since he likes walking in general, it calms him down- but when it comes to school, he’d rather not walk at all.  
  
His mother sees the expression glued onto his face and rolls her eyes, brushing his hair from his forehead. “Come on, school is not that bad.”  
  
“It’s not,” he agrees, “but I still hate mud. And I have a giant headache.”  
  
“Coffee and Advil?” she asks, smiling. When he just looks at her pleadingly, she snorts and pushes the TV remote in his hands. “You little ass kisser. Find something interesting to watch.”  
  
He sticks his tongue out at her as she’s leaving the room, but settles further into the couch, yawning as he’s flipping through the channels. At first he feels the need to groan a few times when all he sees are soap operas, and he ends up settling on some shitty documentary about the paranormal. He doesn’t really pay attention to it as he’s listening to the pitter-patter of rain against the window pane. The sky is a weird shade of earthy blue, like it’s singing an ode to sleep to Gerard’s tired eyelids. It’s times like these when Gerard remembers his brother, and the way he’d always say there’s no sadness allowed on rainy days- if the Heaven is crying, you shouldn’t follow suit.   
  
Gerard doesn’t believe in God anymore.  
  
When his mother returns, he knows she’s thinking the same, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he just takes the mug from her hand and sips carefully, swallowing his thoughts down together with the coffee. He doesn’t need that right now, he reminds himself.  
  
“Hold on, turn the volume up,” she says, eyes on the screen, and Gerard obeys indifferently, his thoughts somewhere far away from home.  
  
He remembers hair dye, since he knows his roots are far out already and his hair looks like it’s levitating an inch away from his scalp. Then he thinks of how soft Ryan’s hair is, and how Jamia laughed when Gerard stuttered out the compliment so ungracefully that he wanted to bury himself in a hole right there and then. He almost smiles at that, almost, but then he feels the need to scratch his wrist again and the moment is gone.  
  
“Holy shit,” he hears his mother whispering beside him, and he travels back into reality.   
  
He looks at the screen, expecting something groundbreaking, but all he sees is a shitty energy drinks commercial flashing across the screen in vibrant colors. “Huh?”  
  
“We were on the news,” she says, her words still a little unsure. Gerard’s eyebrows draw together, forehead creasing, and she looks at him. “No, not _us_. But our town. This town.”  
  
“Why?” It’s a pretty shitty town, he adds in his head, but doesn’t voice it.  
  
She thinks about it for a moment, but then she settles back into the couch, her breathing shallow. “Two people found dead in the woods.” She looks out the window, seeming unnerved, glancing over the trees that mark the beginning of the forest that surrounds the entire town. Gerard gulps obnoxiously loud. “Slaughtered.”  
  
“Well,” Gerard sighs, a weird sense of dread spinning in his head. He scratches his wrist a bit, but then releases a breath he was holding for too long. “Fuck.”  
  
“That’s not all,” his mother says, seeming slightly disoriented. “They’re world-class criminals. _Were_ ,” she blinks a few times rapidly. “Serial killers, or something, the police was chasing after them for over ten years.”  
  
“Holy,” he wheezes out, slightly messed up from the thought that someone got brutally murdered practically in his back yard. A part of him is trying to process how creepy that is, beckoning him into the thoughts of being in danger whenever he steps outside, but the other, louder part is actually only thinking about the overall justice of the situation. True, nobody actually deserves to die like that, but perhaps people who’ve killed so many deserve it just a little bit more than your average, ordinary human.  
  
He ponders over it a little, sighing when he realizes it’s kind of pointless. “Do they know who did it?” Or what, he thinks, but decides against mentioning it to his mother.  
  
“No,” she grimaces, biting her own lip in the process. “That’s what fucked me up this much, actually. Remember the thing I told you about the other day, with the sheep and the oil tar?” Gerard nods, not sure where this is going. “Well, it’s literally the same thing. The people’s parts were all over the place, and there was oil tar everywhere. They even showed pictures, goddamnit.”  
  
Gerard suddenly feels just a little sick to the gut. “Isn’t that, uh, kind of creepy? Like, with the sheep it could’ve passed for some sort of animal attack, even with the tar… but how would an animal know to differentiate a murderer from someone who isn’t one? I mean, it’s obvious that it was somehow intentional, people go to that forest every day-”  
  
His mother puts a hand over his mouth. “No.”  
  
Gerard closes his eyes and squints forcefully, sighing against her palm. “Okay.”  
  
*  
  
“All I’m saying is,” Gerard sniffs, “is that it’s shady as fuck. I need a cigarette. I spent the entire night up just thinking about this.”  
  
Jamia’s lips draw into a tight line, and Ryan looks like he’s thinking as he says, “Maybe it’s just a coincidence? I mean, are you sure it’s not just an animal attack?”  
  
“Yes! I’ve watched enough horror flicks to know it’s not _just an animal attack_ ,” he huffs out, rubbing his face with his palm. “I’m tired.”  
  
Jamia glances at Ryan, who grimaces shortly, but then nods after she throws a few convincing facial expressions at him. Gerard is just looking at them with a blank face expression, he feels like the bags underneath his eyes have developed a mouth and are currently eating his entire face away. “You can cut the telepathy crap, you know.”  
  
“Listen,” she finally says, eyes soft and smile genuine. “My parents aren’t home this weekend, so Ryan and I were thinking of planning a small get-together. You seem really strained, and I think you need a break.” Gerard is already about to say no, but she cuts him off before he even forms the words in his throat. “It’s just us and a couple of friends. They’ll all love you, I promise.”  
  
He looks at Ryan, who’s watching him expectantly. He raises an eyebrow. “Is the guy from the library going to be there?” Gerard cringes at the memory.  
  
“Who, Frank?” Jamia says, and Ryan starts laughing. At the name, or something else, Gerard doesn’t know. “Maybe, I’ll ask him tonight. He and this guy, Pete, are pretty much arch enemies, though, so I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.” She winks suggestively, and Gerard’s stomach spins at the sole idea of what she might be thinking.  
  
“No, it’s nothing like that,” he says, sounding a little too defensive to be convincing. Ryan looks amused, and Jamia chuckles at Gerard’s face expression. He can feel the blood rush all the way down to his chest and he hates it, but he bites back the urge to fall through the floor and releases a long breath.  
  
“Sure it isn’t,” Ryan smiles, ruffling Gerard’s hair fondly. “You need to dye this mane, man, these roots make you look like half of your hair is missing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi. i suck, huh.
> 
> i should thank mineral for this chapter. hell, i should thank mineral for my entire life. the entire world should just collectively thank mineral for generally existing.  
> well, after that short-but-informative rant, i'm off- 'the voice' is on tv and i am lame.
> 
> xomls


	4. Every Breath Is A Bomb

Gerard's face looks kind of paler than usual in the mirror.  
  
It's probably just because of the stupid fluorescent lighting, but it's still making him uneasy as he's sniffing abruptly and trying not to get any dye on his shirt. It always makes his head itch when he first applies it to his roots, and it stings a bit, too, as if his scalp is punishing him for letting them grow out so much. He'll think of it sooner next time, he promises it to himself, and shoves a plastic bag over his head when he's finished.  
  
His room is cold, but he likes the breeze, and he leaves the window open again despite his mother's plea from this morning to keep it shut because of the moist. He can't help himself, he hates feeling like he's suffocating- he gets a weird kind of claustrophobia when there isn’t enough oxygen in the room, and everything seems to trap around him.  
  
His breathing is soft but his hands are shaking anyway, they always are, even as he puts some random record on for background noise. It's some old, dark punk rock, raw as hell, but it flows through the air just right, and Gerard can feel it relaxing the muscles of his back as he lights a cigarette. It barely catches, and he reminds himself to buy a new lighter soon, but he puts that thought at the back of his mind as he lets it go blank for a moment or two.  
  
The plastic bag is smushed between his scalp and the hardwood texture of his headboard, he can hear it whenever he tilts his head upwards to take a drag. It's calming; in a sense- Gerard is one of those people who can find a chunk of peace only in the harsher kind of noises. He isn’t sure what he means by that, but he still understands- it’s mostly just the fact that muffled background noise makes other, unexpected ones quieter than they should be.  
  
It's already close to sundown when he reckons that 30 minutes had passed, and he flicks the butt of his third cigarette out the window.  
  
He's always loved the way all the foam turns lavender blue after it's left his hair black, and he can't help but to appreciate the flow as it's traveling towards the drain. He just watches it disappear for a few moments- he sometimes wishes he could follow the blue, along with the one inside his head.  
  
His hair reminds him of oil tar again, now that the dye is renewed, and he flinches uncomfortably at the thought.  
  
He rinses the remainders out of his hair quickly, cursing at his own clumsiness when the shampoo gets into his eyes. It smells like fresh daisies, green tea and early spring peaches, and it reminds him of his old home so much that he wonders if he'd maybe deliberately brushed it over his eyelids just so that the pictures would come back. They're abstract, some just fractals of forgotten memories while the others are pretty live and vibrant inside his brain- they make him feel like his younger self is dancing over his imagination and pushing all the wrong buttons.  
  
It makes him want to puke, so he turns the faucet to the right and embraces the cold that streams across his scalp in that moment; washing the unwanted thoughts away.  
  
*  
  
Gerard doesn't register that he's put his oldest, most faded band t-shirt on until his mother mentions it later.  
  
“You’re going out. Not to bed,” she remarks, tilting her head to the side lightly. She looks like she’s studying him, but he’s so used to it when it comes to her that it doesn’t bother him as much as it usually would. Her hair is in her eyes and her shoulders are bare, and he can’t help but to wonder if it’s a good thing that he’s indeed inherited his mother’s shoulders.  
  
“It’s comfortable. Besides, it makes me feel nicer,” he responds rather coldly, and it’s nothing unusual for him, but she still walks over and straightens it up for him. The sunset is shining lilac and China rose through the window pane, and her skin looks like it’s glowing in all shades of transparent mulberry right across the arm that’s currently fixing his collar. She always looks home as the sun is falling asleep.  
  
“Prince of scruff,” she rolls her eyes, but reaches up and kisses his cheek.  
  
He smiles, content, “Queen of compliments.”  
  
She huffs at his sarcasm and lightly kicks him in the shin. “You’ll be late.”  
  
*  
  
The sky feels as if it’s about to combust anytime as Gerard’s docs are trying to grab to the sidewalk firm enough.  
  
It’s pretty warm, but everything is in that post-sunset blue, and Gerard can’t help but to sympathize as his fingers are dancing and cramping uncomfortably against his thighs. He knows he’ll feel like an asshole if he chain-smokes all the way there, but his anxiety is making it three times harder not to reach for his back pocket and empty it whole. He’s a little uncertain on his feet- as if the ground is pulling him down like it knows it’s where he belongs.  
  
He feels like checking if it’s possible to drown in any of these huge puddles stacked around the street, but he supposes it’d be too much trouble. Besides, he’s just dyed his hair; it’d be a waste- maybe next time, when his roots grow out again.  
  
Jamia’s house is rather close, and if you look at it from an angle right enough, it will start feeling as if it’s threatening to eat you alive. Gerard likes it, though- he likes everything that looks sad and twisted enough to fit into his standards.  
The lawn is mostly just dead weeds and there’s mud everywhere, but the stone path that leads to the front porch looks like it’s been spared by the rain. He isn’t sure if he’s supposed to step on the welcome mat but he somehow manages to ignore it, and before his knock has even reverberated down his fist, someone is already opening the door.  
  
Ryan has flowers in his hair and his three quarter jeans are washed out and sliced above his bare feet and his smile is little, but genuine. Gerard dares to return it to him with a twitch of the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t actually think you’d come, to be perfectly honest.”  
  
Gerard coughs, his stomach twisting uncomfortably. “I tend to surprise people. Well, not really. This just kind of happened.”  
  
There’s a pause where all they’re doing is looking at each other, but then Ryan’s hand touches Gerard’s elbow, ghostly, so light that Gerard isn’t sure if he’s made it up or if it actually happened. “I’m glad you’re here,” Ryan offers, and Gerard can feel his face stretching into a smile.  
  
The hallway is dark and narrow, but as welcoming as fawn walls and iron chandeliers can be. It’s antique and warm, and he feels calmer the moment he hangs his trench coat on the rack by the front door.  
The carpet in the living room is dark marine and it suits Gerard’s mood well, while the walls are soft cream and enveloping some landscape paintings and black and white photographs like flame would a building on fire. There are a few people in the room but Jamia is the loudest, and she immediately comes up to Gerard when she sees him. “I told you he would come,” she huffs at Ryan, who just backs away slowly, and Gerard almost laughs at the way she squints her eyes at him. “Now, this is Pete- the heart and soul of the party.”  
  
The dark haired boy stands up and smiles wide. All Gerard can really see is chin and teeth and straightened black hair, and even though he knows he’s red in the face he accepts the hand extended for him to shake. “I don’t usually do these queen-of-England kinds of gestures, but Jamia threatened to hurt my kidneys if I said or did anything rude.”  
  
*  
  
Blending in feels like home sometimes.  
  
Jamia’s armchair is incredibly comfortable even for skinny jeans standards, and Gerard appreciates the fact his knees have stopped shaking after Jamia said he doesn’t have to refrain from smoking in here. He’s sitting by the balcony door and it seems as if he’s participating in the conversation, but he’s really just nodding his head whenever someone talks to him. He doesn’t think they mind; they understand.  
  
At one point, when he’s gathered all the courage he has in his system, he asks Jamia if he could step outside to the balcony, just to get some fresh air and clear his head. He isn’t sure if she even heard him right because Pete is trying to annoy Ryan by singing some horrible song loud and directly into his ear, but she smiled and said ‘yes’ anyway.  
He doesn’t like the floor of the balcony because it’s too neat to feel real, but the fence is made out of stone that seems as if it will fall apart any second now. Jamia’s back yard is simple and all he can really see in the distance are a few hills and a forest, but he likes how the remains of the sunset bit a light strap right above the horizon. It’s soon gone, just like half of his pack, and he’s reminded of his brother again when he sees the first few stars blooming in the sky. He always associates him with the sky- he supposes that it too is sad that it’s not looking down at him anymore.  
  
“Mind if I bum one?” a vaguely familiar voice from behind him says, and Gerard’s breathing immediately speeds up when he acknowledges the fact he’s not alone anymore. He turns his head around as far as it can go, his feet still stuck to the floor stiffly, as if they’re silently forbidding him to move. He sees the messy hair and wide eyes of the guy from the library and his primary instinct tells him to run, but he’s aware that it isn’t an actual possibility right now. So he nods, a bit slowly, and hands out the pack without a word.  
  
Gerard knows that his lighter is shitty as hell and that it needs to be flicked a bit sideways when you’re using it, but he isn’t sure how the guy figured it out on his first try. Maybe it’s just that Gerard is slow by nature and isn’t aware of how people’s logic works, but he’s at least figured out that he’s staring at the guy before he did.  
  
“You need to get a new lighter, man,” he remarks, and Gerard just snorts obnoxiously. He’s a bit surprised when the guy chuckles at his reaction, but he just shakes his head and accepts the pack and the lighter with the hand that is trembling less. “I know you from somewhere.”  
  
That’s when the lump in Gerard’s throat becomes a rock, and he can’t seem to swallow it as he tries to shrug his shoulders as indifferently as possible.  
  
“Oh, I know. You’re the guy from the library.” He says it in such a tone that makes Gerard’s body freeze even though he feels like he’s suffocating from the heat in his stomach. He nods weakly, avoiding any possible eye contact for all he’s worth. “You’re not very talkative.”  
  
It takes Gerard a moment, but then the rock from his throat turns into a bubble of hysteria that just somehow rolls onto his tongue. When it comes out, it’s in the form of a really loud, intrusive laughter, and he somehow feels as if it would be labeled as morally questionable by anyone who heard it. “I’m sorry, I just-” he wheezes out as his eyes are watering a bit, and he feels slightly calmer as he coughs out the rest of the bubble. He ignores the way the guy’s looking at him and uses the remainders of adrenaline to try to speak like a normal person.  
  
“Why aren’t you inside?”  
  
“Well,” he sighs before taking a drag, and Gerard notices the way his fingers curl just a bit against his jaw line while he’s doing it. He’s got nice hands, he concludes, and curses himself internally after he realizes he’s even thought about that. “Wentz hates me, I don’t particularly like Wentz, everyone else likes Wentz and they all  _kind of tolerate_  me. You do the math.”  
  
Gerard’s stomach swirls a bit just because of the familiarity of it all. “Why does he hate you?”  
  
“He thinks I’m all shades of fucked up,” he says, sour. He seems pretty distant, but the glint his eyes get after saying those words feel closer to Gerard than his own two hands do. “Why are you out here all alone? I mean, I’m here now, but that doesn’t count as much.”  
  
Gerard sniffles a bit and grimaces at the sound, but finds his own mouth before his nervous brain does. “I suppose I just don’t know how to have fun.”  
  
“Ha, the finest trait of a loser,” he says, and the words seem bitter and stingy, but they don’t hurt as much as they would usually. “I don’t know how to have fun either. Well, not in an acceptable way anyway.”  
  
When Gerard doesn’t respond, the guy just sighs quietly and turns around. “I’m off. Thanks for the smoke. I’m Frank, by the way. Even though you probably don’t care.”  
  
Gerard smiles a bit and looks at him sideways. “Gerard. Even though you probably don’t care.”  
  
Frank smirks, “You’re right,” he starts walking towards the balcony door. “I don’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo. so, guess what, i'm alive. [i feel like i should be happier abt that than i am.]  
> since when does "hotel room with three beds" equal "hotel room with actually two beds and a pull out couch" ? if you know this information pls contact me at zombiegraphia.tumblr.com,, thanks.
> 
> so you met frank and hopefully realized he's an asshole. asshoe. ass. rabbit stereos.  
> i am not sure why my train of thought went there. i should probably get more sleep. [i probably would if i didn't have to sleep on a pull out couch in a supposedly three-bedded hotel room.]
> 
> yolo.  
> xomls


	5. Sickening

It's cold, and the teeth of the strong wind are what makes Gerard wrap his ratty, brown old hoodie tighter around his shoulders and drag himself inside.  
  
The door creaks and Ryan looks up at him, raising his hand in his direction and motioning at him to sit down on the floor next to him. It’s warm inside, and he finds the courage to unzip his hoodie, his lighter almost rolling out of his pocket and onto the floor. The glass in Jamia’s hand is full of something that looks like slightly discolored coke, and it gets on Gerard’s nerves how it glimmers almost unnaturally against the antique yellow lighting. Pete and Ryan are sharing a joint while Frank is sitting in Jamia's armchair, the yellow one- the one Gerard was sitting in when he first got here, and an uneasy feeling appears at the bottom of his gut when he gives him a lift of an eyebrow as a greeting.  
  
“Hey man,” Pete blinks, “man. Man. Gerard, man.” Gerard just looks at him, disinterested, but Pete continues nevertheless. “Tell Jamia that playing ‘Spin The Bottle’ is stupid. I’ve already made out with Ryan a lot of times and let me tell you that I’m not about that life.”  
  
Gerard just looks at Jamia, who is playing with an empty bottle in front of her and grinning mischievously at Pete, and then at Ryan, who’s too busy singing Janis Joplin to even acknowledge anything Pete is saying. Gerard would gladly object playing, but he’s already started scratching his wrist in his lap and he can’t seem to speak or say anything at all as Jamia is trying to make Frank join the game.  
  
The anxiety doesn’t kick strong, but it still aches his throat mid-breath every time he tries to catch some air. He can’t seem to breathe through his nose even though Ryan settles on kissing the back of his palm as if he’s some kind of royalty, and Gerard’s lips sting from the biting but he still smiles even though he knows the skin will break. It’s sort of trivial, since Ryan is high as a kite and probably not even sure what his own name is, but he somehow still remembers the fact that any form of rough physical contact makes Gerard feel attacked. It makes him feel like a charity case, but he still appreciates the gesture.  
  
It’s safe to say that the atmosphere is near to loose even though Pete and Frank are constantly bickering over something, and Ryan’s disgusted face kind of represents Gerard’s constant mood as Jamia is forced by the stupid game to shove her tongue down Pete’s throat. Gerard’s brain is already hurting a lot when Ryan pecks Frank’s lips horribly awkwardly, and it all feels like a movie whose executive producer is Gerard himself. It’s all too embarrassing, and he practically feels home because of it- but then again, miserable that he associates safety with general shame of simply being who he is.  
  
The situation turns different when Frank spins the bottle. Gerard can feel the nausea up to his throat, and he knows who the bottle cap will point at even before it lands on him. In any other situation he’d probably congratulate himself for being unnecessarily psychic, but all he wants to do right now is throw up without it being in anyone’s lap.  
  
He doesn’t want to have to do this, because Frank him jittery and he’s pretty sure that the guy hates his guts with all he owns. Gerard then feels all eyes at himself, and the sickness he senses deep inside his skull increases because he’s more or less under the spotlight, which is probably the last place he would ever wish to be. He doesn’t look at Frank, instead he just lowers his eyes on his shirt and sees a stain he can stare at right beside the collar, but when he realizes it’s pitch black and it looks like oil tar more than anything else he feels the bile working up towards his head. He closes his eyes and he’s fighting off the urge to scream, or vomit, but he’s afraid his vocal chords might blow up and stain the clothes of everyone around him. And staining other people’s stuff is rude, isn’t it?  
  
He can’t fucking breathe, since he’s painfully aware of the fact that he can’t exactly back out of this. He isn’t sure why it’s so important not to come off as a moron he knows he is in front of Frank, and Frank alone- maybe just because he knows the guy has no compassion or mercy, and will make him feel ten times shittier about being himself than he already does.  
And it’s kind of a path into his own doom either way, because Gerard hasn’t kissed anyone since fifth grade.  
  
But at one point, when he’s already close to tears, he hears someone moving. He freezes because he expects it to be towards him, and when he opens his eyes to check, he catches a glance of Frank looking at him, from across the room. His eyes are cold and shining dark, and Gerard knows his own are wide open as is Jamia’s mouth from beside him. The contact is pushing ice cubes down his bloodstream, but the way Frank breaks it and turns around quietly is what catches his nerves tighter than they were the entire evening, and his scalp feels like it’s on fire. He hopes it isn’t, though, he’s just dyed his hair- it’d be a shame if it all burned out and slid off.  
  
And with that thought Frank is gone from his sight and down the hallway that turns dark right after the door slams shut. Perhaps it was the wind that extinguished the candle Jamia had lit almost an hour ago- and perhaps it just couldn’t bare the frost Frank carried around with himself when he walked.  
  
*  
  
The air is chillier than it was before, and the fog that rose around the front porch of Jamia’s house is only making Gerard’s knuckles go whiter than they usually would.  
  
He feels kind of choked, like the disgust he saw in Frank’s eyes when the bottle ordered him to kiss him just piled up between his lungs and bronchi and made him want to bang his head against a wall. It all happened so fast that Gerard isn’t even sure if it really did, but the sinking sensation he still feels in his pulse is probably the truest evidence he can muster up with right now. That is, if you don’t count the pitiful look Ryan shot his way when he thought Gerard was too dumbfounded to notice.  
He refuses to look at the scab he’s dug up on the left side of his forearm in the meantime even though he’s sure it’s bleeding.  
  
Gerard’s knees feel like they’re filled with gravel as he walks the familiar third of a mile it takes him to get home. The windows are shining dark blue and it doesn’t fit the paint of the outside walls at all, but it still comes as a relief that he won’t have to walk up the stairs in complete darkness.  
  
There is some strange stillness to the world after midnight and it reflects on this town particularly- it is so calm that the thought feels disgustingly plastic in his head. It’s like some bad drug that makes you have video game dreams and nothing feels completely real; as if it would all start crumbling if he touched it.  
  
The volume of the TV is quiet and his mother is dozing off on the couch again, bare arms on rough fabric and Gerard immediately goes up to her and touches her wrist gently. She stirs and opens one of her eyes, whining slightly when she sees his eyebrow arch up.  
  
“Alright, alright, I’m going upstairs,” she grumbles in a thick voice, “thank you for reminding me who’s the real mother here.”  
  
He sniggers quietly and it hurts the back of his throat because it’s so uncertain, and she picks it up, but shrugs it off like she knows he doesn’t want to mention it. She probably does- because he never wants to mention anything.  
  
“You go first,” she continues, remembering the stairs, “I’ll go get some water and lock the door.”  
  
“Three times?” It escapes his lips in a wobbly tone even though he doesn’t want it to, and her guilty smile just confirms how anxious he is to the tips of his fingers.  
  
“Three times.”  
  
*  
  
Gerard’s never liked the way stairs feel underneath his feet.  
  
It’s better when they’re bare, the wood is smooth then, but it always creaks more when he’s got shoes on. It makes his nose scrunch up and he immediately loses a part of his balance, as if the sound has hooks that want to drag his body down in between the thick boards.  
  
The stairs are a threat of a sort to him- but that’s old news. Most things are.  
  
He doesn’t like sleeping in sweaters but getting a second blanket takes energy which he doesn’t have- it’ll rain, he’ll be cold. He’s left the window open again and he can smell the soil from the outside. It sticks to his eyelids, makes him sleepy- eyelashes heavy and shoulders weak as he brushes his teeth in the bathroom and comes back to his room, closing the window.  
  
His brain is collapsed before his head even hits the pillow, and he’s so tired- tired enough not to notice the tar black stains around his window pane.  
  
*  
  
The only thing interrupting the dawn’s quiet is the sound of Gerard’s breathing.  
  
It’s smooth for the most part, but sometimes it skips a beat and it makes his left hand twitch before it grabs his bitten pencil again. He isn’t sure what he’s doing, if he were to draw it the picture would just be hideous brains on paper and he supposes he’d make it feel like sunrise, since he likes painting time in frozen fractals.  
  
But instead, he’s just puking words, just pure shit mostly, mixed with scruffy handwriting and solid thoughts that would otherwise melt into oblivion if there wasn’t for his left hand to scribble them down. He doesn’t like being left-handed, he feels like it’s a bit off, but for the most part he’s also off-minded so it doesn’t make any difference at all.  
  
He isn’t sure when he’s woken up, probably around four-thirty since he’s lit his first smoke around five. He never liked dawns in fall when he was a kid; he always thought they were too dark, too gray, too empty.  
  
But then again- he never thought he’d feel like one back then, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tell me abt your plans for this summer/winter. xo


	6. Lavender Blue

This is the first time Gerard agreed to cut class with Jamia.  
  
It's only French, nobody will even notice they're gone, she said, eyes tired as she was dragging him across the hallway towards her 'secret smoke spot'. He felt tingly, arms in an overlarge sweater casting shadows across the gloomy walls and making it feel like proper October. His feet were a little uncoordinated but he supposes that's the reason she hasn't let go of his sleeve yet- Jamia knows things without making them too awkward to discuss.   
  
She told him he smells like exhaustion and Pall Mall this morning and he couldn't disagree since he hasn't slept like a human being in over a week. He can't really help it- every time he closes his eyes all he sees is sharp teeth and tar-stained fingers gripping his throat and choking the life out of his body. There's a pair of eyes behind the madness sometimes, too, but it's only after he's asleep that he sees those; green, gray, red and jet black on golden brown that rounds the darkness he's staring at. He starts whimpering, then, he knows he does because his mother told him that's how she used to know he was having a nightmare when he was a kid- but it doesn't last long. Something wakes him up and it feels like it's something gentle on his wrist but when he wakes up nobody's there and he's left with an aching chest and the urge to light a smoke.  
  
He doesn't tell his mother about the nightmares because he knows they're different than the ones he's used to. It'd worry her and she already worries too much- the calm is just a charade that they're both trying to persuade themselves is real. _It's just paranoia_ , he tells himself, _it’s who I am._  
  
“Your lighter is fucking shit,” Jamia says and, as if to prove her point, drops the lighter in his lap. “Do it for me.”  
  
He blinks a few times, just to get his focus right, grabbing the lighter from the dent in his sweater and flicking it in that sideways motion which is the only way to get it working. She takes a drag and lets the cherry burn right before looking at him in suspicion. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”  
  
He coughs on instinct, furrowing his brow. He takes a moment to think, rolling his cigarette between his index and middle finger. His nail polish is chipped again, but so is everything else in his head, so he doesn’t really have to worry about that. “H-uh?”  
  
“Your eyes are really bloodshot,” she says simply, leaning her shoulders against the brick wall and looking at the rain falling a few feet in front of them. She hasn’t washed her hair, he knows because her hood is up, and her lips look chapped as she’s taking another drag. “And I know you’re not a stoner or anything. You’re also really pale, and the purple around your eyes isn’t really helping the situation much.” She stops herself then, but when Gerard is about to respond she continues. “I mean… don’t get me wrong, you do always look like you got punched in the face,” she rolls her eyes at Gerard’s ‘jee, thanks’, “but you seem horribly drained lately. I want to know what’s up.”  
  
He ponders over it for a moment, blowing a puff into the rain and thinking about how disgusting the drops that caught smoke would be if they by any chance ended up on his tongue. “Just had trouble sleeping,” he says, and he’s proud to say it’s not an actual lie. “That’s all.”  
  
She just gives him a look though her eyelashes, and doesn’t say anything until her cigarette is squished underneath the sole of her shoe. They’re dirty and washed out, and he realizes he never thought dark chucks could fade so well until he met her. There are letters in green pen ink written all over the white rubber, and Gerard knows they’d read out Bouncing Souls lyrics if he were to look more carefully. He smiles at that, but she doesn’t notice, instead she just lights another cigarette and sighs into the knee she’s hugging with her free arm, the one that isn’t holding the smoke. He likes how one month in her presence made him trust her more than he trusts himself- but then again, he’s more likely to give up on himself than anyone else seems to have been.  
  
“Do you ever feel like the world is playing some huge prank on you?” She suddenly looks really bitter, like un-sugared coffee and years of heartbreak all piled at once. “Like someone up there is watching, and all they fucking want is to make you as miserable as you can possibly get?”  
  
Gerard smirks a bit, just for irony’s sake, and hopes that whoever is watching usually isn’t doing it right then at that moment. “Yeah. And they’re a serious dick.”  
  
Jamia snorts, shooting him a dirty look through her grin. “ _A serious dick?”_  
  
“Go fuck yourself.”  
  
“I met this girl the other day,” she bites her lip, “red lips, dark eyes, long legs and hair as black as yours. She asked me out.” She huffs a laugh into her sleeve, as if she’s mocking herself. “And I said no.”  
  
“So I was right thinking that silly bandanas and badly-sung Bee Gees songs were more of your thing.” She looks at him carefully then, almost as if she was scared. He smiles like he understands and her eyes seem calmer for a second.  
  
“I didn’t think it was that obvious.” Her tone is reserved, and distant, and probably just as cold as the rain that’s been drumming against the school’s windows for hours now.   
  
“It isn’t,” he reassures, twisting a lock of his hair around his finger to keep himself from fumbling after a cigarette. “I just notice things. LikeI noticed that Ryan has no idea.”  
  
“I might have to kill you now, y’know?” She smiles, and it finally reaches her eyes when Gerard returns it. “You know too much.”  
  
He shakes his head slightly even though it hurts. “Don’t pretend like you don’t have any dirt on me.”  
  
He’d maybe say he’d caught her off guard if someone asked, but he’s pretty sure she recovered before his brain could even comprehend it. “There’s something off about you, you know? You’re just… you’re so… tragic? It sounds pathetic, but it’s sort of the kind people write about in novels and shit. The blue kind of tragedy, the one that looks like rain and sounds like Sunday.”  
  
Gerard smiles nostalgically, his heart beating a little faster. It’s just a reaction to letting people in, even a little bit. He supposes there’s got to be at least some connection between tragedy and Sundays- he’s never liked the Sun anyway.  
  
He doesn’t even realize that he hasn’t responded when she continues. “Is that why you don’t seem to notice anyone around you? I mean, you’re a teenager, most teenagers are stupid, shallow horndogs who are just waiting for someone to fuck. And you’re- well, not.”  
  
“I guess I don’t care about,” he inhales, “fucking. Not really. I suppose I just don’t believe anybody wants a sad person by their side. Not just regularly sad, I mean,” he clears his throat, and he can already feel the knot in his chest when the anxiety kicks in. “Sad by default. Lavender blue kind of sad.”  
  
“You’d be surprised to know that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone say something like that,” she says, eyes peering into the distance. Gerard can hear the thunder as it rolls and the downpour just thickens as he’s trying to breathe normally again.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
She doesn’t say anything.  
  
*  
  
It’s way too quiet in the library when he arrives.  
  
He stays away from the cold corner this time- _Frank’s corner,_ or whatever you want to call it. He’s got Bad Brains’ discography on shuffle even though it’s set to a low volume, and he’s browsing in the Poe section when he hears the drag of Jamia’s chucks from behind.  
  
“You suck,” she simply states when she sees he’s got ‘Frankenstein’ shoved underneath his arm, “Do you read anything shitty? Or human?”  
  
“No,” he smiles and hands her a copy of ‘The Black Cat’ to hold for him. “Take this, I’m going to get some Anne Rice real quick.”  
  
“I’ll be here somewhere,” she tells him before he strolls off.  
  
He just stares at the titles for a while when he sees the familiar name, but he’s cold all of a sudden and his sweater fits uncomfortably against his elbows as he shifts in distaste. He smiles when his favorite song starts playing in his earphones, and he crosses his fingers over the golden letters engraved into the hardcover of ‘Interview with the Vampire’. They’re cold, too, and his neck feels weak as he slumps a little forward on reflex.   
  
“Bad Brains, huh?” He hears, and he bangs his shoulder against the shelf in startle. It hurts and he knows a bruise will bloom there as soon as tomorrow, but he ignores that as he turns around to look at Frank.  
  
“How long have you been standing there?” He asks, voice raspy as he’s looking at the book he’s dropped, blood-red letters spelling out Mary Shelley’s name above the title.  
  
Frank picks the book up from the floor, dusting it off with his hand, his face studying the cover as he’s running his other hand through his messy hair. “That’s a really good band,” he ignores Gerard’s question and stares at the book a little bit more. He then looks up, face softer than Gerard’s ever seen it before- still far from gentle or anything of the sort, but at least Gerard can’t read out ‘I hate you’ from the arch of his eyebrows anymore. “And this is a really good book.”  
  
“Yeah,” is all Gerard can reply with, and he spends a moment just willing his eyes to break contact with Frank’s. It’s strange and Gerard’s entire body feels out of place, stomach swirling with nerves and he almost recoils from the fear when Frank holds the book out for him.  
  
“You have good taste for a loser,” is all Frank says before he turns away and walks down the same aisle Gerard’s come from.  
  
“You too,” he says in all but a mere whisper, glancing at the book in his lap.   
  
He swears he can hear Frank’s chuckle reverberate from somewhere in the darkness of the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brought to you by sunny day real estate and my summer vampire vibes. it's july, almost halloween. time doesn't exist. xo


	7. Have A Happy Halloween

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw; gore

It's dark, and he's not alone anymore.  
  
What appears to be the sunlight is just a candle, ripping through the pitch black with its yellow and casting an obnoxious shade across his body. He isn't sure if he is the one screaming or it's someone else from the dark, but he's the only one the monster is currently looking at. It's intruding, and he can feel his blood coiling across his ribcage while thundering inside his head; his stomach is clenching in discomfort while he's holding eye contact. The eyes are so pure, so golden, so bright, like daylight on delicate flowers and forest streams that flickers sparks into dark holes in the ground.  
  
Those same eyes that feel so warm come closer and the darkness around them thickens, bold straps across thin air that reeks of old basements and little children's worst nightmares. The creature smirks and the shadow deepens again, and Gerard can feel the artery on the left side of his neck beginning to throb.  
  
He feels the skin open and the scream his throat releases is much more intense than the others before it. It kills every noise in the space and drowns any ounce of hope left in his stiffened body- it sounds like death and he swears that it feels like it, too, even more so when the blood starts to spill down his back in unruly spirals and lines that cut dark red through the freckled white.  
  
It separates the part of his brain that deciphers pain from the one that fears it and the creature laughs, gripping at the wound on his shoulder with its nails, all scratchy and sharp, and drags the flesh downwards to his chest. It smiles into his face and it's the kindest smile Gerard's ever seen, all bashful and sweet like cotton candy and ferris wheels in late July when everything is a carnival dream, but then it turns almost as wicked as burning sun and scorching droughts and he can't breathe anymore.  
  
He opens his mouth but the air that crawls inside is more lead than oxygen and the creature cackles into his face. He can sense something hot in the back of his throat and his gag reflex starts working- he vomits all of the blood right into his lap because he can't lean anywhere else. It's darker than it should be from all the tar and it tastes like liquid rust and fire and torture, and his eyes are watering from all the pressure on his head.  
  
His throat feels raw and it burns like a thousand acidic needles are digging holes in his flesh, his larynx bleeding out and clogging his airways. He’s trying to yell, trying to fight but the creature has him there- still, pliable, poisoned- he separates his lips to scream but all that comes out is just more jet black tar mixed with blood-red bile, spilling in a colorful line over his Adam’s apple.  
  
The creature just drags its nails down and rips more of his chest, reaching down almost to his navel. He sucks in a breath and it's disgusting, but he'd rather do it all over again than look into those beautiful eyes that make him want to puke all over himself once more. He feels contagious with venom pumping through his veins, like a curse, and the pain shooting all across his torso isn't helping. His blood is getting darker and thicker by the minute and it's pouring down in unsteady waves like his body is pushing it outwards, fading red mixing with greasy black and swirling his brain into a sickly sweet sense of sleepiness.  
  
The creature's face is closer now and it's looking into Gerard's tar-stained eyelids, dark hair matted around his neck, face wrecked and whiter than the sky on a snowy day.  
  
Then he can feel a grip on his forearm. It's slight, and as gentle as a feather of a dream catcher lost amongst cobwebs after cobwebs in the corner of an old attic. It’s familiar and he knows it’s telling him to open his eyes since now there’s a known brightness in front of his eyelids.  
  
So he does.  
  
The first breath is always the unsteady one, getting used to the surroundings and the feeling of a soft blanket covering his back instead of his own blood. His hair is in his face and it smells nice, peaches or some shit, his head is too heavy to remember now.  
  
The rain is drumming against his window, falling harsh and grainy from murky thunderclouds, calming his heartbeat a bit so he can finally find the strength to sit upright. He can still feel a slight knot in his wrist, the one that warned him he should wake up.  
  
He ignores the red around it, he thinks he’s probably just banged it against a cupboard or something. Maybe he’s scratched it too hard last night, but he can’t really tell since there isn’t any scraped skin to go by. He sighs. There’s nothing to his dreams, he supposes, but he still can’t get rid of the unnerved feeling he gets whenever he remembers it’s the same dream all over again.  
  
He puts on slippers and heads downstairs to get some coffee. He hates Sundays- nothing is a good-enough distraction on Sundays.  
  
*  
  
The week passes in a strange kind of hurry.  
  
Gerard can’t say he hasn’t noticed when people started putting the decorations up, but his perception of time is miserable at best, so it’s nothing unexpected that Gerard is taken aback when Jamia calls him on Friday afternoon and asks if he wants to go trick-or-treating with her.  
At first he just says he needs to help his mom with something and that he’ll call back, then drops the phone onto his bed before sliding with his body onto the floor. His eyes stare at the window but he doesn’t know what he’s looking at. It doesn’t matter, anyway.    
  
He still remembers the first time he’d taken Mikey trick-or-treating. The kid was hardly five years old and he missed both of his front teeth, but instead of declining when Mikey asked if he can go with him, Gerard ruffled his dirty blonde hair and cut up the whitest bed sheet he owned. Mikey hugged him then and told him he was the best brother he could ask for. Gerard just kissed his forehead and made some holes in the fabric so Mikey could see where he was going.  
  
He remembers the last time he’d taken him, as well. Gerard was trying to hide his cigarettes in the pocket of his coat, and Mikey, aged thirteen, was laughing at him from across the room in a Darth Vader costume that was way too baggy on him by then even though it was a teens’ small. He was mocking him how the face paint was ridiculous since he looked dead enough as he was, and Gerard hit him with a shoe. It was the last time Gerard left the house for Halloween.  
  
He sucks in a breath, steadying himself, pulling at his hair, coordinating his breathing. He doesn’t need this right now. He sends Jamia a text before he goes to look through his closet.  
  
_‘fuck halloween. pick me up @ 7.’  
_  
*  
  
“I don’t even like candy,” Gerard says, hands in the pockets of his giant black robe. “I mean, I do, but Halloween chocolates suck.”  
  
Jamia told Gerard he looks like a hotter version of 1931 Bela Lugosi when she showed up at his doorstep. It was probably funny how red Gerard turned then, but he doesn’t mind, he’s almost at ease while Jamia is there.  
He wasn’t even getting at Count Dracula but he supposes it was inevitable- he is the most popular vampire out there, anyway.  
  
“They do,” Jamia nods, twisting a lollipop in her mouth and trying not to peel off the artificial scab she’s painted across her right cheek. She makes a really good zombie, Gerard concluded when he first saw her- all green face paint, matted hair and plastic guts poking out from underneath her ripped shirt. They probably look like a badass monster-villain duo, he dares to think, but he doesn’t voice it. “That’s why other candy exists. I’m pretty sure gummy bears are my favorites, though, even though they’re probably the least healthy kind.”  
  
“Isn’t that, like, the point?” Gerard makes a face and she laughs, elbowing him in the side lightly. He smiles.  
  
“Damn,” she says, climbing the small stone staircase leading towards the graveyard. [ _“It’s not Halloween if we don’t go to the graveyard, Gerard,” she said matter-of-factly, pulling him towards the road that leads to the cemetery._ ] It’s small, and eerie in a cozy kind of way- Gerard almost smiles at his way of thinking, his mother says he’s been just slightly macabre ever since he was a little kid. “The only thing I love more than this place, is, like-” she pauses, furrowing her brow, “my mother. Or something.”  
  
“This place looks like a Fugazi song,” Gerard helpfully notices, and Jamia just looks at his serious face before she cracks up. “I’m not playing with you.”  
  
She just laughs and nudges him to tag along, skipping around the tombstones like half-drunk while whistling a tune familiar to Gerard’s ears. He drags himself across the wild grass and meets her in one of the corners of the graveyard. She stops in front of a rock and rolls her eyes when he asks if it’ll make their asses wet.  
  
“It’s not wet,” she says, and pulls something from the rock swiftly.  
  
“What the-” Gerard stops himself, but she just giggles and waves her hand like it’s no big deal.  
  
“Ryan and I have claimed this spot as our secret castle when we were nine,” she smiles, eyes nostalgic, and looks at the big rock again. “There isn’t much left of the castle, but we still come here to get high sometimes. And for a town as rainy as this one, you gotta’ be safe. Therefore the ‘raincoat’.”  
  
“You knew each other when you were _nine_?” Gerard asks, a bit baffled. He doesn’t think he remembers anyone he’s known in middle school, let alone any earlier.

“In Redwood, you pretty much knew everyone when you were nine,” she breathes a laugh and settles down on the rock. “It’s really not wet.”  
  
Gerard tentatively sits down, checking if there’s anything that might poke him in the butt beforehand. He gets his cigarettes from his pocket as soon as he gets comfortable enough in the spot to just relax and take his surroundings in. He lights two immediately and hands one to Jamia, breathing in the dirt, the rain and the smoke.  
  
“It’s the place where he kissed me for the first time,” she eventually says, blowing the smoke in front of her, watching it hit the closest tombstone and then evaporate towards the sky. “We were fourteen and it was summer,” she bit her lip, the pink turning white against her teeth. “He told me he wanted to be my first kiss.”  
  
“I don’t know how to kiss,” Gerard admitted, cheeks heating up. He wanted to scratch his wrist a bit and make the nervous feeling go away, but he settled on sucking on his cigarette instead. “This girl tried to kiss me in fifth grade. It was a disaster, awkward as fuck, she cried when I told her I didn’t like her. I felt like such a dickhead.”  
  
“Aw,” she coos and Gerard flips her off, pulling his knees to his chest, balancing his feet in the dents of the rock. “I’m so pathetic, Jesus Christ. I mean, I’ve dated a couple of people over these few years, but they’re not-” she cuts herself off.  
  
“They’re not him,” he finishes for her. She mutters out a ‘yeah’ and Gerard leans his head on her shoulder. It’s not a big deal, but he knows she’ll appreciate the gesture. “And you’re telling _me_ about pathetic. I’m pushing eighteen years old and I’ve never even kissed anyone. Not for real, anyway.”  
  
“Well, it’s not like you’re old or anything,” she takes a drag and looks at him, blowing the smoke into his face. “You still have a long way to go. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing you haven’t kissed anyone if you didn’t think there was anyone worth kissing- if that makes any sense.”  
  
Gerard smiles, waving her smoke off with his free hand. “It does, yeah. I mean, I suppose I could’ve-”  
  
She tenses up. “Hush. Did you hear that?” Gerard stands still for a moment, not making a sound, and he’s about to tell Jamia to stop freaking him the fuck out, when he hears it. It’s just shuffling at first, so quiet he’s wondering how she’s even picked it up- his head immediately fills with images of vampires and other creatures with inhuman hearing- but then it turns more rhythmic and his ears begin to decipher footsteps.  
  
It seems that the person isn’t in a hurry, and they’re slowing down frequently as if they’re trying to maneuver their way around the graves. The footsteps become louder yet again, and when he squints a bit, Gerard can see a moving silhouette in the dark.  
  
They’re not very tall and their clothes seem plain, black, maybe a bit rugged since he can see blobs of light in the knee area as if the person is wearing jeans ripped at the knees. They come closer and Gerard’s breath catches in his throat when he sees the face, the familiar glint of the lip ring and the messed up hair curling above the ears of the person he immediately recognizes.  
  
He looks at Jamia and she looks just as confused as he feels, and she mouths ‘Frank?’, as if he’d be able to hear from that distance.  
  
But before he can reply, he sees Frank sitting down cross-legged in front of one of the tombstones. He pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from what seems to be his back pocket and lights one real quick, grabbing the thing he dropped while he was settling himself on the ground. It’s a miserable bunch of meadow flowers but it looks like he picked them himself, and Gerard’s heart falters a little at that.  
  
“Hey, ma,” he says with the smoke between his lips, but then he takes it out and smiles at the tombstone. “Happy birthday to us, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lucki flipped me off frm across the ocean bc of that horrible reference. rip me. fuk u lucki. 
> 
> all my body's proteins are coagulating at like 40 degrees celsius. rip me. come save me. it's hard 2 be a vampire when u live in the mediterranean. 
> 
> oh, & a quick psa:  
> balancing ur laptop on a broken skateboard while writing is NOT a good idea.


	8. Ghosts

"I know the flowers are shit."

Gerard's entire chest is clenched, Jamia's fingers tightly around his wrist. It hurts, it's where his scrapes are, but he knows it'd make her feel bad if he voiced it. But it's okay, he presumes, he probably wouldn't be able to speak if he tried anyway.

"But I couldn't really do better," Frank's voice is wavering, like he's not sure if the words leaving his mouth are his own or somebody else's. He takes a long drag of his cigarette, so violent Gerard can almost hear it crackling; orange and bright underneath the dead, gray ash. His cheeks are hollowed, eyes set, narrow- he looks like a masterpiece painted from watercolor spite and the grief loss takes with itself wherever it goes. 

"I know you like wildflowers."

It's like all the power in Gerard's body leaves him, because Frank's words and the tone of his voice hit so close to home, even though he isn't saying much at all. Even the glint in Frank's eyes reminds him of a familiar darkness he'd probably be able to smell on his own clothes if he were to stick his nose in the collar of his shirt right now.

"I know I've been a shithead lately," he says after a few moments of tense silence. He throws the butt of his cigarette behind himself, burnt to the filter. His hands fumble and he quickly lights a new one, lighter hot pink and half empty- it makes Gerard's fingers itch for a smoke. "It's been almost three months. Not like you were going anywhere." He rubs his eye with his free hand, over purple bags and tired lids, his lips curving downwards a bit in a frown so unnatural for such a pretty face. He messes up his hair, scratches at his stubble and sighs long and pained before inhaling more of the smoke. It's the same smoke that'll probably kill both him and Gerard, who's still trying to catch a breath, at some unfixed point in time- but the sad truth is that neither of them really cares, especially not right now. "Sorry, I'm being an asshole again. I bet you're used to it by now." 

He takes a few more drags and shuffles around with his feet, knees bare and awkward and so cold while so close to the wet ground. Frank doesn't seem to mind. "Talking, I'm not good at it. It's why I avoid you a lot, I suppose. No use in denying it anymore, right?" 

Gerard's never spent more time without blinking in his life. 

"Fuck." It's such a powerful word, Gerard thinks, or a really weak one after all- it can be used for anything, mean anything, or everything- and if you're lucky... maybe even nothing at all. It's pitiful, and all Frank can muster up with, but at this, godforsaken, broken fractal of time, it doesn't seem like there's anything else to say.

He doesn't talk for a while after that. He chain-smokes the entire time- it makes Gerard bite his lip almost hard enough for it to bleed. Frank shifts a lot, like something in his veins is keeping him from standing still. At some point he relaxes just a bit, but miserably- his arm on the tombstone and head against the arm. 

If Gerard didn't know better, he'd think he might've heard a cry.

Frank picks himself up swiftly enough. Cigarette back in between his lips, eyes heavy and knees looking scraped as he's getting up. He sniffs a bit, spits out some excess smoke, and his voice almost startles Gerard when he speaks again. "I'm sorry I'm so bad at this. Fuck, I'm apologizing to a dead person." He grimaces when he realizes what he's said. He utters to say something else, but hesitates, and then it looks like he's settled for an alternative. "I wish I could be better. I wish I could let someone else help me be better. But whenever there's a chance, I fuck it up. I suppose it means I don't deserve 'better', then. Maybe. I'm not good with words."

His mouth draws into a tight line before he takes another drag, and he holds it in for a few long seconds before blowing it into the wet air. His eyes are focused on the tombstone, he crosses his fingers over something. Gerard supposes it's the lettering- the way his knuckles dive and curve across the dents Gerard imagines are there. It's such a gentle gesture and his face is the softest Gerard has ever seen it become- for a moment, a slight moment, before he looks vile again.

"See you soon. Well, not see you, but y'know." 

With that he strolls off, steps a lot heavier than the ones that carried him to the graveyard in the first place.

*

Gerard hasn't felt this shaky in a while.

His cheeks are cold, shoulders quivering- his whole body feels run down by storm but he thinks that, somehow, it hasn't even started raining yet.  
He recalls the nightmares, the fears and the general paranoia coiling through his veins and he's about to scratch at his wrist again- but then he remembers Jamia is in the room with him.

"He never told me about his mother," she says, elbows on his mattress and dark hair spread around his pillow. She's ashing into a plastic cup and his head hurts like crazy, but he can't even pinpoint why this time.

He doesn't talk for a while, just looks out the window like he's expecting the lightning to put words he doesn't have in his mouth. "I've never thought of sadness as something so visual until I saw him there."

"Yeah," she sighs, silent. 

"It felt like someone manually tied a knot in my stomach," he says finally. His shoulders hurt

"Imagine how he must've felt, then."

"I know how he felt."

Jamia's brow furrowed, and he felt in his bones what was about to come. "No, but really-"

"I know how he felt." His words had a crude echo to them.

"Gerard, his mother is dead-"

He started shaking a while ago, but this is probably when she first notices- his neck craning and skin tingling with cold sweat. He hates this part. 

He walks towards the bed, knees almost giving in. He breathes harder, spine and back strained and frozen. He sits down and picks up the picture frame from his nightstand.

Jamia's eyes are wide and hands stiff- she's probably ashing all over his bed but he can't bother to tell her that. He's too busy staring into his own eyes, staring right back at him from the picture, hazel and innocent like he wishes they could still be. Where did all that naivety go? And why did it have to be replaced with infinite layers of stomachaches and repetition of the phrase 'I don't want to talk about it' so much it burns his tongue and makes his throat swallow the fire?

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Jamia says, and it'd maybe even sound reassuring if her eyes weren't as scared and curious when Gerard dared to look at her. He doesn't blame her, he's thankful she's so polite- not a lot of people would be.

"It happened a few days before his fourteenth birthday." Gerard hasn't heard his voice shake so much in almost a year. "I don't really know what else to say."

"What happened?" 

And Gerard tries, he really does, but the tears don't listen to his orders- and neither do his shoulders as they shake the sobs away from his body. "I'm sorry, I can't-"

Jamia tries to touch his shoulder, but Gerard shrugs it off carefully. It just makes him feel more pathetic. 

A minute or so passes and he calms down, salt dried on his cheeks and head heavier than ever. He lights a cigarette, breathes into the night- it's unsteadier than usual, but then again, so is his head right now.   
The window sill is cold just like his lungs despite the burn every larger drag leaves there. He can't get rid of the feeling God is watching him and laughing at his misery.

"You okay?" Jamia asks weakly.

Gerard nods, it's all lies anyway- she probably knows. 

She's a good friend, after all.

*

There's something special about early mornings.

Maybe it's the way the air smells like you could snap it in half, or the breeze ruffling your hair like an old friend. It's all soft, mauves and peaches blending in with the autumn gray like watercolor across the overcast sky.  
It feels real, grounded- almost enough to bring Gerard's head back from the clouds.  
He's wearing a chunky knitted sweater on bare skin, and it matches the dirt-brown tones from outside. It's dark olive green and it's keeping his body warm, but he's still cold nevertheless.

He's got a mug of black coffee sitting on the sill in between his elbows, head leaning on one hand while the other is holding a cigarette. He smokes too much, he notices, but he doesn't seem too bothered by it when he brings the smoke closer to his lips.

He thinks about Frank while he's taking the drag. First, it's just a question mark somewhere inside his head- something like curiosity- about his mother, his strange mood swings, or just simply his overall weirdness. He's the only thing Gerard's ever met in a library that he can't read at all.

Then, just like that, it's not only that. It's also how he talks; fast, distressed, but it's still quiet and it sounds a bit like rain on gravelly roads in early spring. How he looks at things, people, everything; with big mossy eyes and rage, such violent rage- so much of it that Gerard thinks it might be sadness. His voice, his sarcasm, the way he smokes- everything he is looks like he was built to despise the world.

But something makes Gerard think that maybe the world is the one who had despised him first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sleep-deprived, my laptop doesn't work, i'm having an existential crisis, i barely found the strength and motivation in me to post this for i am in the middle of a month-long creative breakdown. please don't give me shit for not updating.  
> if the formatting is weird, blame my phone. i do it for all my issues.


	9. Sparks

Sunday morning, Gerard decides to take a walk.   
  
The sky isn’t blue; it’s almost purple with the way dark clouds roll beneath the red of the trees. But it’s the last thing on Gerard’s mind as he shrugs an old straight-cut, black coat over his shoulders. He can feel the skin of his cheeks drying; it smells like soap, early November and things he wants to forget about. The road outside is dry, but not for long, he can sense the chill down, deep inside his spine. There’s a storm coming later, it’s already the air- the wind is too warm for it not to rain.  
  
He doesn’t plan on going to the cemetery, at first. It’s too much, in his head and on his hands, but he can’t help it as he skips the few steps it takes to get to the ingrown stone path. It’s prettier in daylight, all gravestones a slightly greener hue- the moss sort of makes it look like home; the one of the living, not the one of the dead.  
  
Perhaps it’s simple despite Gerard’s inability to comprehend: perhaps he just can’t resonate with the living. There he has to speak, speaking makes him nervous- fuck,  _thinking_  about speaking makes him nervous and he can’t do anything about it. Perhaps the dead are easier to talk to. Simply because they don’t ask you for words when you can’t find them.  
  
Gerard is not good with words.  
  
But what does being good with words even mean?  
  
He walks around the cemetery a bit. He likes the way his shoes feel against the grass, the wind around his arms warm, ruffling his hair. He spreads his fingers apart, lets them dance in the weak sunlight and closes his eyes. His lungs are yelling at him to stop, to think but he doesn’t let himself care, he doesn’t let himself be afraid now. Now it’s just him- him, the wind and a bunch of dead people who are never going to ask questions he doesn’t want to answer. And it feels right, for the first time in ages- it feels right.  
  
“Having fun?”  
  
Gerard almost falls to the ground. His heartbeat changes pace abruptly, so abruptly it feels dangerous, but the face he’s met with when he turns around doesn’t make it any better.  
  
He isn’t wearing a jacket, but he doesn’t seem to be freezing in just a long-sleeved sweater. He’s only in jeans, as well, and his shoulders are loose, like he isn’t even pretending to like the temperature- as if it’s somehow engraved into his bones. Gerard supposes that someone so cold inside couldn’t freeze even if they tried.  
  
His hair is a mess, but a mess that rounds his face like it was made to be; and Gerard can’t help but to hate himself because he wants to curl some of it around his fingers.  
  
“How long have you been here?” Gerard breathes, air thick in his mouth, stumbling a bit backwards even though Frank doesn’t move from his spot. His face is stern, eyes set, he seems strangely at peace for someone whose general setting is so hostile.  
  
“Long enough,” he says casually, hands in his pockets as he’s leaning backwards slightly. “Why are you out here, all alone? Haven’t you heard about the attacks?”  
  
Gerard breathes through his nose, popping his joints in order to calm himself. “I could ask the same thing.”  
  
Frank laughs airily, as if Gerard told a joke only he understands. It makes goose bumps appear all over his arms and the fact that he’s alone in a cemetery with Frank suddenly starts flashing all over his head in big, bold letters. He doesn’t let himself feel like it’s a warning.  
  
“You should relax, you know,” Frank adds, moving one of his hands into his back pocket and even before it happens, Gerard knows he’ll pull out a pack of Marlboros. “You always seem so jittery.”  
  
At first, the remark doesn’t do anything to him. Gerard feels nothing at all, he’s heard that so many times before that he can’t bring himself to react with anything more than a shrug.  
  
But then it suddenly stops, and it feels like something collapsed inside his lungs and it almost starts physically hurting somewhere inside his brain, his bones, limbs- it’s a sensation that burns the pit of his stomach and puts a match to all of his organs that have been soaked with gasoline for way too long.  
  
_“I can’t,”_ it feels poisonous to pronounce it, as if his tongue is made out of cyanide and his teeth coated with sulfuric acid- but he feels angry. It’s so strange because Gerard doesn’t _do_ angry. He does scared, confused, terrified, anxious and awkward, and now that all of the above are gnawing at his insides, he feels angry, and it feels like hell just as it feels like heaven at the same time.  
  
Frank looks up from his lighter and the fire is still burning inside of Gerard when he tells him, “I know. Want a smoke?” He flicks his wrist sideways, making one of the cigarettes poke out from the pack.  
  
Silence.  The anger doesn’t stop, it just lowers its volume into something like a dull roar as it tests the limits of all the breaking points in Gerard’s head.  
  
“Do you really?” Gerard senses his eyes turning into daggers pointed at Frank, but he seems unfazed with it. It just makes it worse, it just makes it stronger, but it doesn’t seem to upset Frank as he looks him in the eyes.  
  
“Yeah, I do,” he says nonchalantly, as Gerard looks at him in confusion. “I only said it because I knew it would make you mad.”  
  
“You’re a giant asshole, you know that?” It takes guts, but considering the mood he’s in, Gerard can spare some. He doesn’t know when the next time he has a chance like this will be.  
  
“I know,” he says, taking another drag. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” He’s looking at Gerard through his eyelashes, and Gerard can swear nothing in his life has ever felt as strangely familiar as this. “Now, you want this smoke or not?”

*  
  
Voluntarily hanging out with Frank isn't something Gerard thought would happen in his life.  
  
But as it turns out, it's not exactly uncomfortable. Gerard feels a bit tense since they're sitting so close, in between two unmarked graves, smoking cigarettes as if they're just old friends who don't have much to talk about nowadays. Frank refused to sit on Gerard's coat, but he let Gerard smoke a half of his pack without mentioning a word of it. Gerard thinks it isn't like him to do that, but he doesn't say it. It's a relief, if anything.  
  
Another thing Gerard has noticed about Frank is that, when he isn't being snarky, he isn't conversational at all. Weirdly enough, Gerard doesn't think it's because he's boring to be around. His gut feeling tells him it's just the way Frank is. It's different with other people- Gerard's brain is usually so adamant on telling him he knows what they think, what they _feel_ about him that there's no room or time for him to actually observe the whole thing perceptively. But with Frank, he never knows what page they're on- he doesn't even know what page he, himself is on, let alone such an ambiguous person like Frank.

  
“You know,” Frank says, breaking the silence, “I sometimes feel like you never get tired of thinking.”  
  
Gerard bites his lip, closes his mouth. He brings his half-smoked cigarette to his lips, but changes his mind before taking a drag. “I do.”  
  
Frank looks at him, eyes wide and big as always, eyebrows slightly raised as if they’re signaling for Gerard to keep talking.  
  
“I get tired of thinking a lot,” Gerard admits, sucking both of his lips between his teeth now, “I’m just… not in command, I suppose.”  
  
Frank sighs, long, so long that it could’ve easily lasted an hour. He takes a drag and says, “Yeah. I know what you mean.”  
  
He looks up and Gerard looks at him- jaw solid and strong, lips curled upwards just like the soft tips of chocolate brown hair against his neck. Then Gerard looks into the clouds as well and back at him, and he can’t help but notice the resemblance between Frank and the oncoming storm.  
  
“It’s raining,” Frank simply says, even though a single drop hasn’t fallen yet. Gerard is about to say something, but then he feels it.  
  
For a second or two, it’s just one drop on the tip of his nose, but then the sky opens up.  
  
“Fuck,” he hisses, standing up and grabbing his coat from the ground. It hasn’t been ten seconds, and he’s already soaked. “I haven’t got an umbrella. I’m going to get, like, three pneumonias by the time I get home.”  
  
Frank laughs. There’s no sign of bitterness to it, he _laughs_ , and it’s the most peculiar thing Gerard’s ever seen. His eyes close, eyelashes dark and wet against his cheeks because of the rain. “Come with me,” he grabs Gerard’s hand, laughing still. He’s got a dimple on the left side of his mouth. “I know just the place.”  
  
*  
  
“You’ve broken,” Gerard heaves, “into a _mausoleum_.”  
  
“It’s not like any of them really care.” Frank rolls his eyes. “They’re dead.” He pulls out what’s left of his pack, laying it on the floor to dry. “Besides, I come here all the time. No ghost activity spotted.”  
  
Gerard smiles a bit, leaning against the wall. He doesn’t know why, but it’s warm in here. Frank’s sat on the floor, testing his lighter to see if it still works. “Do you believe in ghosts?”  
  
Frank doesn’t look up from the lighter. “No.”  It sparks. “Do you?”  
  
“I don’t really know,” Gerard says, running his fingers through his damp hair. His fingertips hurt, he’s bitten his nails too much. “I guess I don’t, not specifically. But I still hope they exist.”  
  
The lighter ignites. “Why?”   
  
“It would make death easier to handle,” he tells him. “I suppose it’d be comforting to know people that died still exist on some different level.”  
  
“But what if they don’t want to exist?” Frank says, looking into the wall opposite of him. His fingers are dancing around the flame, going through it. “What if that’s the point?”   
He lays his palm directly onto the lighter.  
  
“Jesus Christ, Frank, you’re going to burn yourself!” Gerard runs up to him, takes his hand away from the lighter. He is about to examine the damage when he feels Frank looking at him.   
  
“I’m fine,” he says, quiet. “See?” He shoves his palm in front of Gerard’s face. There’s no sign of injury on it whatsoever. Gerard reaches out to touch it before he can stop himself.  
  
When he realizes what he’s doing, he can feel the horror hit the back of his eyeballs. He’s about to recoil, or run away- but he realizes it’s still pouring outside and he really has nowhere to hide. Frank’s eyes are wider than ever, but he catches Gerard’s hand before it slips away.  
  
Gerard can hear the lighter hitting the ground beside them, it’s invasive how it echoes against the mausoleum walls. Frank’s other hand is reluctant, but when Gerard doesn’t protest, it touches his neck and his fingertips brush through the hair behind Gerard’s ear, pulling him closer. Gerard’s on his knees in between Frank’s thighs, one of his hands touches Frank’s chest. It’s warm and his heartbeat is really, really slow- Gerard doesn’t know how that could be since he looks just as scared as Gerard feels. Frank tugs him even closer, so that their noses are barely a millimeter apart, and Gerard can sense the heat of his breath; he can hear it ringing in his ears, as well.   
  
Gerard’s fingers curl into Frank’s shirt before Frank kisses him.  
  
It’s soft, Gerard’s cheeks are damp and he knows he feels cold against Frank’s skin. He supposes Frank won’t mind- even though he feels warm right now, it doesn’t change the fact Gerard is ice on the inside whenever he spots him from across the room. His lips feel so tentative, but demanding at the same time, and Gerard doesn’t know if this means anything to him at all. His eyes are closed and the backs of his eyelids look dark blue, everything looks dark blue- but blue had never been a warm color before he met Frank.  
  
It’s silent when Frank stops kissing him. It’s so silent Gerard can feel the dead talking even though there’s a storm raging outside.   
  
Frank’s hand in Gerard’s hair was gentle only a moment ago, but now it’s stiff and hard across his scalp. Everything is cold again.  
  
“I should probably go.”  
  
And just like that, he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, ok. i suck.


	10. Sea of Monsters

Weeks had passed, but the sinking feeling inside of Gerard’s bones has not.

 

He thinks letting go of things is necessary even though their previous impact still hurts his head. Bad things happen, people leave, people get hurt. It’s how life works, he tells himself. He just wishes he could finally admit that life is one of those things he’d never been good at.

 

Donna doesn’t enjoy seeing him troubled. It makes her feel anxious. It’s a fear of the unknown, she supposes, plaguing her thoughts and sending a giant wave of tension through the air above the breakfast table. It’s an enchanted circle, Gerard thinks, the tension just makes him feel worse about everything.

 

Knowing why she gets so worried doesn’t help the situation in the slightest. It’s different than general guilt, it’s searing into the back of his skull like a tape recording of all the things he hates about this world. He feels like a scratched record, fuzzy and dysfunctional but playing the damned album all the same- glitches distorting the sound every five seconds and making goosebumps grow across your arms.

The words hanging in the air as they’re drinking their morning coffee in silence feel like ten thousand ghosts were trapped in his room just to haunt him. Gerard hates feeling like he’s being examined.

 

“Just tell me I have nothing to be worried about,” she finally says, eyes boring into her Aladdin Sane mug as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Her hair is dark on her white t-shirt, the glow of the soft streetlights illuminating her skin. They’re still lit, it’s not even six in the morning.

 

Everything is blue in the room, Gerard feels as if his skin is, too. His hair probably looks like midnight even though he needs to dye his roots again. It feels like forever since the last time his shampoo foam was lavender and everything hurt in the right way. He should remember to pick up some dye on his way home from school today.

 

Gerard takes a deep breath, staring into the crevices of the wooden table beneath his hands. They’re harsh like the shallow gashes across his knuckles, dry skin spread apart and nearly bleeding. He has to learn how to moisturize properly- Jamia had already given him three creams, and he's lost every single one.

 

He isn't used to his mother's question. She knows how stupid it makes him feel when people talk to him like that. It's this incredibly unnecessary pride within him, he figures; it's nonsensical how much he wants to keep everything inside. It adds a few bricks to the faux wall of security he's built around his metaphorical frame. He tries to convince himself it's made out of solid rock, but it's pretty obvious it can be cut through as scissors on paper. It definitely means he isn't having an easy time answering it.

 

“You have nothing to worry about,” he says. He means it, for the most part- the situation at hand truly isn’t something he wishes to give her headaches about. He's just confused, and troubled, and everything he always is but with the addition of someone he can't read and his own feelings he doesn't comprehend.  “I’m fine. I’m just a bit out of it.”

 

She lifts up her left eyebrow, opening up the pack of cigarettes lying on the table. “Out of what?” she asks, putting one in his mouth, one in her own.

 

He smiles a bit as she’s lighting them. “Everything.”

 

The corner of her mouth turns upwards, sadly. She knows what he means, even though sometimes she wishes she didn’t. Gerard never realizes how well his mother knows him. But maybe it’s for the best, she thinks, taking a drag and looking at the murky clouds through the window. It’s just another thing he’d overthink.

 

He doesn’t need that. Overthinking kills. She knows that better than anyone.

 

*

 

Gerard sometimes wishes Ryan wasn't as nice as he is.

 

It'd be self-absorbed of him to say that it makes him feel bad. It's not about him, and even if it is it's definitely not because Ryan wants Gerard to feel like an asshole.

He just has this aura of acceptance to him, it's simply who he is- a personality whose thoughts are as gentle as his words, as his hands. Gerard sometimes feels as if Ryan’s mouth is filled with flowers that bloom whenever he speaks.

 

The sunny weather is so unusual for late November but it seems to make Ryan happy. He's all golden eyes and even brighter smiles ever since the last rain fell and the northern wind dried up the city. He’s been wearing a really ratty trench coat ever since, but even Gerard has to admit he’s a little tired from carrying an umbrella wherever he goes.

 

Wednesday morning, Jamia has gone to her grandmother's for Thanksgiving holidays and left them three rolled up joints in Ryan's locker, in a thick envelope with a note that said ‘if you're the principle, please don’t tell my mom’. Gerard doesn’t think he’d laughed that hard in a while.

 

That afternoon, Ryan takes Gerard to the graveyard. He is slightly uneasy as he walks the stone path, but he has a feeling Frank hasn’t been there in a while. The flowers on his mother's grave are withered and close to gone, but he'd never admit he’s checked. Ryan sat on the ground since it wasn't wet, rambling some bullshit about dying grass with an already lit joint in his hand. Ryan never changes. It’s probably one of the things Gerard is grateful for this year.

 

He doesn't usually like to smoke. Not cigarettes, cigarettes are fine, he doesn’t feel like they affect his brain as other opiates do. It’s why he never drinks, he supposes, losing the faux control he's convinced himself he has just makes him feel endlessly unsafe. He doesn’t like feeling unsafe in his own head if he can avoid it.

 

Right now, he’s alright, though. There’s something about Ryan that denies most of the anxiety Gerard feels on a usual level. It's like he tamed the lion, turned the hurricane into a breeze- it's still there but now he can breathe through it. He doesn’t think Ryan even understands he's doing it, but he's still glad he does. Another thing he’s grateful for, he supposes.

 

“I dreamed about the ocean last night,” Ryan says, voice airy through the wind. His skin is pale, freckles soft underneath his eyes, hair glowing orange and hazel underneath the four PM sunlight. “The water was purple, the sand was red and brown. I was in really shallow water, lying on my back. I was looking at the sky, it was dark as hell, but it was still kind of light. It was like a sunset, the sky was dark orange but the clouds on it were like really thick ashes.” He took a drag, coughed a bit, closed his eyes and continued.

 

“I remember feeling really… dispersed in the sea. Oh, and I'm totally bullshitting all of this eloquence right now, but there's literally no other way for me to describe it. It was like… like I was the salt, like I was the waves- it felt like the ocean and I were one, you know?” He looks really serious for a moment. He opens his eyes and looks up at Gerard, small frown curving from the tip of his nose towards the left side of his mouth. “It felt like a sign. Maybe that feeling is what this life is all about and whatnot. It felt like that in the dream, at least. Again, I sound really fucking pretentious, but I guess I'm making _some sense_  at least.” He looks at Gerard with blown pupils. It's endearing. “Am I?”

 

“You are,” Gerard says after a few moments. “I like the ocean. Being close to it feels like home. Jersey shore sucks, but it's still the place I grew up in.”

 

Ryan sighs, looking over the graves absent-mindedly. “There used to be this boy.” He doesn't continue, he leaves it at that until the butt of the joint is dead and inside a plastic bag sitting on the grass beside him. Gerard waits for him to resume as if he knows why it's hard for him to talk about it. “The dream reminded me of him. His clothes always smelled like the ocean. I guess his mom used some fancy-ass detergent, I don't know.” It's all he says- practically nothing, but it feels like so much more from the way his voice sounds like he's floating somewhere far away.

 

“Something tells me this boy is no longer around.” Ryan nods, still not looking at him. “And something else tells me you're not that indifferent about it.”

 

“He fucked off to God knows where this summer. I only found out he had moved away when I saw his house was on sale.” It feels wrong, seeing Ryan so bitter. He looks like his skin is going to tear any second now. It’s scary for many reasons- but mostly because Ryan is the Sun and this feels like so much more than a regular eclipse. “He didn’t call, or write. I tried for a while, I did. But after a few days of doing that I realized he would’ve said something if he wanted me to know.” Gerard can’t describe the expression Ryan’s face is holding when he says that. His words don’t sound like flowers anymore. “Jamia doesn't know.” It's just a statement, but Gerard knows it might as well be a warning. It doesn't feel good, but he knows he won't tell her. She doesn't need that right now, anyway.

 

“You can tell me about him. If you want.” Gerard stumbles over his words. He knows Ryan's noticed, but he won't point it out. He never does.

 

Ryan's eyes are red when he looks at him again. He clears his throat once, twice before he seems alright enough to talk. Gerard doesn't ask. “We met because he needed help with, uh, how do I put it… paying attention in class, I guess. He had a hearing aid. He wasn't completely deaf, but he had trouble taking notes and all that. I remember him wearing his hair long because he was embarrased about it.”

 

“It never made a difference for me. People thought he was weird because he was quiet. He was actually really funny, but nobody saw that because they never made an effort to get to know him. He wore these really stupid striped t-shirts with little patches on them that made him look like a giant nerd. He had a crescent shaped stick-n-poke on the back of his neck. I thought it was so fucking cool.”

 

“It was really weird for me when I first realized I liked him. It wasn't a surprise, or anything like that, I had always thought he was attractive, but it felt different when I actually admitted to myself that it wasn't just that.” He huffs a laugh and ruffles his own hair, nose crinkling a bit. He doesn't look ashamed, just slightly nostalgic, as if he's living through a memory he's been trying not to think about for a while. “He took me everywhere. We once went to the shore with his dad's van and smoked pot by the sea with our shirts off at 4 AM. That was the first time he kissed me. Right under the fucking stars. _It's so you think of me every time you look up at the night's sky_ , he said. I don't look at the stars anymore.”

 

“He was my first. Everything, really. On the Fourth of July we got drunk in his backyard, emptying his mother’s bottle of cherry schnapps and falling asleep on the grass. He had a thing for stars and fireworks, I just had a thing for him, I guess.”

 

“We bickered a lot. We were never official, either. That's a part of the reason why Jamia doesn't know. The other part is mostly because I didn't want to tell her I had a friend who was more than a friend, but refused to admit it to anyone that wasn't me or him. It made me feel pathetic.” He laughs for real now, but it's shallow and fake, and the saddest sound Gerard has heard in weeks. “He did care for me, though. I don't know if he loved me like he said he did. I don't want to invalidate whatever it is that he said to me. I guess I'm not being rational, but it doesn't even matter anymore.”

 

Gerard gets up from the rock, nesting himself next to Ryan on the floor, thigh to thigh. He's not good with emotional support, but he hopes Ryan can see he's doing his best. He puts his hand on Ryan's shoulder, tentatively.

 

Ryan looks at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. For a moment, Gerard thinks he'll say something, but suddenly he's deathly close, eyelids closed and lips on Gerard’s mouth. Ryan smells like blueberries, honey and heartbreak, and his lips are so soft and sweet that they might as well be sugar, but a kind so bitter that it’s oozing with despair and a hopeless kind of deliberation. Gerard has never felt this frozen in his entire life.

 

Ryan quickly moves away, face scared and shoulders shaking. “Oh, fuck, sorry, I didn't mean to do that, I-” he bites his lip looking everywhere that isn't Gerard, “I'm a fucking mess and you were there and I'm so sorry.”

 

Gerard is still frozen, but he manages to will his arms to come unstuck, so he opens them wide and hopes Ryan will get the message.

He does, after a second of hesitation, and his head is in Gerard’s clavicle, breathing shakily as Gerard tries to keep him from trembling. Strangely, he doesn't mind.

 

“You’re okay,” Gerard says quietly, hands on Ryan's back. “He’ll fade. Everything fades. So will he. Some day you won't remember him when you dream about the ocean, and if you do, it won't make you feel like it does right now. I know it.”

 

“You're so sweet, Ryan, you're the sweetest person on Earth and that boy can't be the thing to make you bitter. I know he felt like it, but he isn't the ocean and you can't be his shore. You can't stay and wait for him while the current carries him away from you. The ocean may be beautiful, but it never stays.”

 

Silence. For a long time, neither of them speaks. The wind is humming around Gerard’s shoulders, warm, tangling his hair with Ryan's.

It feels like a decade has passed when one of them speaks again.

 

“Thank you,” Ryan mumbles. “I don't think I've ever felt so understood.”

 

Ryan is definitely one of the main things Gerard is grateful for this year, and maybe even every year- if he’s lucky enough.

 

*

 

Gerard’s mother doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

 

She tells people it’s her way of rebelling against the authentic american lifestyle, but Gerard doesn’t need her confirmation to know that's mainly just a really good excuse. A big family dinner tastes like nothing but phantoms of the past when you remember none of the people you used to have it with are there anymore.

 

It used to make him sad. Now he doesn’t feel a thing, but maybe that's how it should be. Mikey wouldn’t want him to be sad over things he can’t change and he's grown so accustomed to the ‘Mikey wouldn’t want him to…’ mindset that he might as well embrace it. It's not that he doesn't care anymore, it's just that he's found a way to feel less guilty about it as time passes.

 

“I'm not going to pray,” she says as they’re watching TV on Thursday evening, bowl of popcorn between their thighs. Gerard just blinks, his silence ushering her to keep on talking. “But I'm going to say that I'm thankful for you being such a good kid.”

 

Gerard sighs, forehead creasing, fighting a bubble of laughter caught in his throat. “Yeah, the model child.”

 

“You're the only one I have.” Gerard pretends it doesn't sting. “And I'm not talking about your grades, or the pot I can smell on your clothes every now and then. You're a good person, Gerard. I guess that's all I ever wanted from you.”

 

Maybe that's all Gerard has ever wanted from himself, too.

 

*

 

That night, it's strangely easy for Gerard to fall asleep. His room is warm and the blanket folds around his body like it belongs, arm underneath his pillow whilst he’s listening to the sound of his own thoughts. It's started raining around 11 PM but it's still nothing more than a drizzle. It calms him down enough to breathe freely.

 

He lets himself think about Frank before he sleeps. He tries to remember what happened in the mausoleum exactly, but he can't escape the fact that the only memory plaguing his mind is the kiss.

Why did he do it? Was it some sick joke, was Frank trying to fuck with his head?

 

No, Frank is not that kind of person. He's a giant asshole, but the last thing he would do is make someone feel used and pathetic. He seemed so honest, anyway, but Gerard’s brain can't seem to process _why_ anything even happened. And, more importantly, why he _let_ it happen. It's not like he made a move to push Frank away.

And, even if he doesn't want to admit it, the feeling of Frank's warmth underneath his palms wasn't uncomfortable at all. On the contrary, the stiffness that ensued after the kiss was the only bit that didn't make Gerard tingly on the inside.

 

He falls asleep thinking about hands brushing through his hair and eyes so clear he can see universes just by peeking through them. He doesn't think he'll endure the denial for long.

 

But it's worth a shot, he supposes.

 

*

 

It's a clearer setting this time.

 

The forest is dim and the grass has a texture as soft as baby's breath, but Gerard’s feet feel sore and cold as he runs through it.

 

His eyes are popping out of his skull and he can sense his hair pulling itself from its roots, blunt nails scratching across timid flesh of his bare thighs. He isn't running anymore. Or, was he running at all?

 

There's a flash in the air in front of him. Something big, something black, something diabolic, and Gerard screams before he even feels the pain that ensues.

 

It starts in his abdomen, deep, fiery and red, explosion of blood tainting his cheeks and neck, clots and bits of torn skin ending up on his shoulders. It smells like a ticking clock with his name on it, like sleeping pills and rotten corpses pulled out from the bottom of the lake. He can sense the blood pooling in the dimple of his bellybutton before it, too, gets shredded along with the left side of his stomach.

 

There's teeth as white as a winter’s day, and the creature looks at him in the eye, face closer than death before his mouth gets devoured, as well. It's kisses elicit the loudest screech from the bottom of Gerard’s gut, dirty and black like the parts of his body the creature hasn't gotten to yet. It’s long and he can feel his teeth turning black with tar before any of them are out, his gums shiny and gross like raven’s feathers spritzed with newly flowing blood.

Gerard doesn't know where his lips and tongue went but what's left of them is leeking red into his skull. Gerard swallows it whilst his eyes are rolling back and forth from madness to real and his larynx stings from all the tar that's seeped around it.

 

That thing kisses his neck next, knife-sharp fangs dipping into the milky fair, and before he knows it a piece of his trachea is out and he can't breathe anymore. He's choking on the blood, on the tar, there is nothing that can bring some oxygen into his lungs and the creature smiles innocently before it pushes the rest of his flesh downwards to his ribcage.

 

It's teeth are in the left side of Gerard’s chest and the obscene, guttural moan the creature lets out is the last thing he hears before everything goes black.

 

*

 

Gerard’s woken up by his phone's obnoxious ring. His voice is groggy when he picks up, one hand rubbing his eye whilst the other is holding the phone.

 

“This better be important,” he huffs.

 

“ _I swear to fucking God,_ " Ryan breathes, clearly upset, and Gerard sits up in the bed immediately. “I had a horrible nightmare. No, _heinous fucking nightmare,_ with this thing _crawling_  all over me and fucking tearing me apart with its _teeth_  and there was something black as fuck- **_black as fucking tar_**  everywhere and I wake up and there are _cuts_  on my fucking abdomen and there is _oil fucking tar_ all around my room and I think I'm going bloody insane.”

  
Gerard drops the phone on the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm such a horrible person, honestly. y'all should unsubscribe on my ass. to make it up 2 you, i wrote this long-ass chapter [not that long, ok, it's like 3,5k words but it's still p long.] 
> 
> my characters are so fucking emo. it's unbelievable. i'll try 2 upd8 sooner this time, but no promises.  
> xo
> 
> milo


	11. Slaughterhouse Sunsets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i guess it's been a while. this chapter is lacking ????? sorry.

When Gerard comes over, he has to open the front door for himself. The rest of Ryan's family have fucked off to his aunt’s place or something like that, and Ryan texted him that he would find him in the bathtub.

 

The Ross’ house is a red-roofed bungalow with small windows; its giant flower garden grows climbing plants across white walls and twirls ivy around the front porch fence. It's off-white and it looks like stone, but it's warmer than that when Gerard holds onto it whilst climbing the steps. The front door is wooden with stained glass ornaments, and Gerard can't say it doesn't feel good to grab its knob.

 

When he calls Ryan’s name out through the dark hallway, the response is immediate. Ryan's voice is quiet, but still loud enough for Gerard to hear from the other side of the house.

The bathroom is pretty, clad in pale blue wallpaper with crown molding in antique gold; it looks a bit angelic. The window is closed but the sill is not, and the faint light is illuminating the left side of Ryan's face and neck. It looks like a dream, or a fairy tale- a complete opposite of the watered down red gliding across Ryan's back and into the blurry water.

 

“It didn't _feel_ like a dream,” is the first thing Ryan says. “I guess it wasn’t one, either.”

 

He looks strangely calm. He's staring into his knees, arms hugging around them almost naturally. He's never really seen Ryan as small until now. (Maybe that has something to do with the fact he is about ten feet taller than Gerard.) People’s size sometimes has more to do with the amount of energy they emit than their actual height: Ryan looks morose, weighed down and more than exhausted.

 

His knees are blue, fingernails light as they grasp onto his own forearms, leaving crescent marks in the soft-looking skin. All he offers Gerard as a sign that he’s acknowledged his entrance is a twitch of the elbow, stiff and forced. Gerard gets the urge to scratch his wrist.

He takes his jacket off, hanging it on the towel rack, his navy blue shirt fitting in the color palette of the room. He grabs the washcloth and runs it over Ryan’s back, carefully, washing the blood away as the boy winces.

 

“You can totally smoke in here.” His voice sounds like he hasn't used it in days, rusty and rough at the edges where it got torn while he was forcing his words out. It's so endlessly _un-Ryan_ to talk like that: like all the flowers in the world have withered to dust. “Jam does it all the time. My folks don't give a shit.”

 

Ryan tells him about the dream, about the way he was chased and tied to a chair, the black room, the eyes- _“Eyes that might as well be sunsets, Gerard,”_ he said, despair dark and strong in his voice. It’s a dream Gerard knows better than anything, the one that’s been haunting him since the first night he spent here, in Redwood. It’s the one that continues, the one that doesn’t let him rest, the one that causes the purple beneath his eyes- but he doesn’t tell that to Ryan.

 

Gerard is immediately aware of the fact he should keep his distance. He isn’t stupid- all of this happening to Ryan of all people cannot be a coincidence. He knows it's not Ryan’s pain to endure, it’s what makes it so tragic in the first place- the boy that would rather set himself on fire than hurt a fly doesn't deserve this kind of torture. The only connection with the situation is the one Gerard is too selfish to eliminate: Gerard, himself.

 

At first, he thought they were only nightmares, but no two people can have a nightmare of the same creature that Gerard never thought could exist outside of his own head. It’s just incredibly unlikely, given the fact Gerard’s interests aren't entirely ones of your average teenager. It’s the perfect villain, the monster that makes you fall for its eyes and then tears you to shreds without even showing you the rest of its being. _Eyes like sunsets_ are definitely not something out of the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, and that’s the only horror movie Ryan has ever watched. It's something Gerard looks for when he opens a horror novel, it's the level of eeriness that used to be so strangely comforting inside a paperback cover.

 

Too bad nobody told him it's not as comforting outside of it.

 

*

 

They’re sitting on Ryan’s couch when Gerard hears it.

 

They aren't paying attention to the TV, it’s only on to diffuse the thick, sticky silence that's making it hard to breathe. Gerard knows he should keep his distance but he doesn't have it in him to push Ryan away as he leans into his side. His curls smell like vanilla and bad dreams, and he's warm despite the fact he's probably cold inside. It's only then that Gerard realizes how thin Ryan actually is, and how fragile the bone sticking into Gerard’s arm feels. He’s soft regardless and his weight is welcome even though Gerard is one of those people who care about personal space way too much. Ryan looks like he needs it and Gerard would never forgive himself if he screwed up and made it awkward now. Ryan feels small and bitter like antique cups of black coffee on winter mornings, in an oversized _Redwood Ghouls_ jersey and thoughts that probably weigh more than his body does.

 

_“... another report involving the ‘Redwood Industrial Accident’. The incident happened in the earlier hours of the morning on a farm two miles up north from the actual town. The farmer stated that he heard loud banging from the stables, followed by obscene animal screeches. Thinking it was a wolf, he reached the stables only to find all of his cattle ripped into shreds. He was about to search for the beast, but then noticed that there were no animal footprints left in the blood on the floor- the only footprints visible belonged to a human. The farmer also says that the entire area was covered in thick oil tar and that he followed it all the way into the Redwood forest where he lost the trace. The animal control report states that there were no unusual wild animal sightings in the area. It is still unsure how the investigation will unfold, since the officials say that they do not know what to look for in case proceedings.”_

 

Ryan’s eyes look comically wide and bloodshot when Gerard dares to unglue his own from the TV and look at him. “Gerard.”

 

Every inch of Gerard’s skin is tingling, the hair at the back of his neck risen and itching. His spine is painfully stiff all of a sudden. He gulps down the breath he's been holding. His chest is tight and it hurts, but when Ryan pushes his face into it, the ache is even worse. Gerard runs his fingers over Ryan’s back without thought, still shocked, but he regrets it when the boy shudders in pain. His shakes are like daggers against Gerard, his breathing rapid and anxious on his shirt. “I’m so scared, Gerard.”

 

It shoots through him, the sound of Ryan’s voice, straight to the nerves because this isn't the first time he's held a skinny, scared boy in his arms like this. Only the other boy is gone, and there is nothing in this world Gerard wants more than to prevent Ryan from living the same fate.

 

“It’s okay,” Gerard says into his hair. “You’ll be okay.”

 

He has a feeling Ryan trusts his words as little as he does.

 

*

 

An illusion of perfect calm falls upon the town.

 

It seems as if nobody cares enough to speak about whatever it is that's been going on, but the way people look around when nobody's watching suggests that the fear of the unknown still lies somewhere within their minds. There is nothing more human about people than ignoring a threat until it is directed at them personally- that’s just the way it is. It’s not like Gerard can blame them for something as usual as choosing their battles.

 

In fact, he finds himself mid-pretend sometimes, too, as if he is left unaffected by the world around him even though he knows better than anyone that it’s what keeps him up at night. It’s like a scent of dread that won’t leave his pillowcase, nor the gasoline stains on the sidewalk downtown that remind him of something else way too much.

 

Blood is thicker than water, they say- Gerard can confirm when he sees the familiar bags under his mother’s eyes, the same ones that look at him in shades of chocolate and timeless gray through an eternal veil of concern. It’s every day that he has to confirm that he still eats, sleeps, breathes, exists; it's through clouds of Marlboro fumes over the breakfast table, two slices of flavorless toast on hand- but he understands. She has a way of living through the dark times just as he does. (He doesn’t like thinking about why Mikey never seemed to have done the same.)

 

The leaves have long disappeared from the branches, the smell of fog and chill is the only companion Gerard has on his way to school every morning. There is no breeze at 8 AM and his black coat is so long it might as well be hiding secrets inside its pockets, but Ryan always says it makes him look like the hottest serial killer he’s ever seen. It's hard to picture someone so bright like Ryan surrounded by winter, but even his words are starting to sound frosty at the edges when he speaks. He isn't broken, but he sure is bent- Gerard can tell by the red in his eyes and the shadow underneath them. He and Jamia pretend that they don't notice the way he is starting to skip school more often than usual. Perhaps it's easier to deal with petrifying if you're all alone. Gerard would know, anyway.

 

It's times like those when Frank comes into his mind. Uninvited, undoubtedly, but there is nothing he can do to stop it. He is the most peculiar and terrifying person Gerard has ever met and yet there's nothing he’s tried to do to move away from him. _Frank’s done that for him, hasn’t he,_ he reminds himself bitterly, washing away the unpleasant taste in his mouth with another cigarette. Maybe Frank is the reason he smokes so much these days, maybe it’s the only reminder he was real and there and not just some weird dream Gerard had on a bad, particularly lonely and pathetic night.

He doesn't really allow himself to think about the kiss. He can't afford to lose himself in a fantasy more than he already has. He has a hard time deciphering his own fears from reality as it is, _could've been_ s and _should've been_ s aren't exactly the types of thoughts that can keep him present and grounded.

 

Intimacy was never a language Gerard knew how to speak, let alone _romance_ or fairy tales and blushing at the sight of cryptic smiles and butterfly lips. It was always so far away, something that didn’t involve him and in his head, never would. He has never given it that much thought, either, he was always too surrounded by his own little world of sci-fi and angry music and all other things that make reality disappear for a while. He isn't sad, he refuses to say he feels anything at all. It's just that foreign languages were never his thing, but this one he was prepared to learn.

 

Too bad it has started feeling like he might not have to.

 

*

 

It’s a rainy day in early December when Gerard goes grocery shopping with Jamia.

  


“Jesus Christ,” she sighs, ruffling her hair and picking up a shopping basket from the stack. “Is there such a thing as white Christmas? I hate it when it rains on Christmas. And it _always fucking rains on Christmas. ”_

 

Gerard laughs, folding his coat over his forearm. He isn't a very festive person, in all honesty, but he cannot say he is immune to the general joy of the season. There is just something about Christmas, the lights and the smells- it makes even Redwood feel alive and breathing despite all the rain. Maybe it's exactly that- perhaps it has something to do with the illusion of purity rain always carries with it wherever it goes. Gerard could use a fresh start or two.

 

“I've never had a white Christmas before either,” he says, eyeing the paper slip with the shopping list that's hanging from her hand. “Guess it's just a fantasy, really. I'm pretty sure it's not even as amazing as people make it out to be. All that comes to mind when I think about it are soggy, icy clothes and having to shovel that shit out of the driveway every day until I go fucking insane. Besides, it’s a real bitch when there’s ice on the roads.”

 

Jamia looks at him through her lashes. “Did anyone ever tell you that you're a buzzkill?” Gerard snorts. “No, really, you know that person at the back of the movie theater that figures out the ending of the cartoon mid-movie and spoils it for everyone, making literally every kid there cry? _That's you .”_

 

“Jeez, will you stop with the flattering?” Gerard says through an eyeroll. “And for the record, I hate movie theaters. The popcorn is so overpriced and I always somehow get the worst seats.”

 

“Ha, loser, you need a better strategy,” she says whilst dumping a bag of gingerbread cookies in the basket. She tilts her head to the side for a second. _“_ _Or should I get these in chocolate? Nah, I'll just take both.”_ She dumps the other bag in there as well, dismissing her digression. “Anyway, last time we went I wore fishnets. Got the best seats in the entire theater.”

 

Gerard laughs, walking in front of her towards another aisle. “Yeah, alright, I might try that out next time.”

 

Grocery shopping is one of those mundane things that make you feel good for no real reason. There's something endlessly calming about walking around aisles of random stuff and bathing in the shitty fluorescent lighting: it's a consumerist delight that makes Gerard abandon all thoughts of blood, oil tar and monsters that are constantly spinning around in his head, even if just for half an hour.

Jamia seems to be the town’s golden child, though, every old lady they run into spends at least ten minutes chatting her up. If anything, it’s interesting (and very peculiar) to hear her keep a conversation going without swearing like a sailor. As expected: in the end, Gerard is the one that goes through her mother's list on his own.

 

The one lady that catches Gerard’s attention is a white-haired woman with huge hazel eyes and soft freckles spread around her wrinkled cheeks. She's carrying a rose gold umbrella and a dark purple cane, dressed in all black and velvet. She smells like musk and lavender when she approaches Jamia, like pricy perfume and homemade shampoo. Her voice is soft, a little gritty, as if she's smoked thousands of cigarettes in her lifetime. (She probably has, if the three packs of reds she bought are anything to go by.) There is something extremely familiar about the way she smiles, but Gerard knows he's never seen her before- something tells him he would remember the encounter if it happened.

 

“It's wonderful to see you, Jamia! How’s your mother? I have some new books I need to show you, I found them up in the attic. You should come over tomorrow,” she says in that gritty voice, running her fingers through her hair. There is a chunky silver ring on her index finger, the milky pink stone shining almost naturally through the soft strands. It's surreal to see the colors blend like that in such awful lighting. “Who is your friend?”

 

She is the only person that hadn't asked if he was her boyfriend alongside a suggestive smirk. Gerard appreciates it more than he thought he would.

 

“Oh, this is Gerard, he's new _ish_ in town. Gee, this is Ms. May, she babysat me my entire childhood.”

 

Gerard pulls his sleeve down before he shakes her hand. He hates it when people look at his scratches. “You're nervous, aren't you?” His face is red by the time he realizes his sleeve pulled up again, but even if she notices, she doesn't mention it. Her smile is small, but reassuring when he looks at her face again. “I know a great herb concoction. Shoos anxiety away like a charm. You should come along with Jamia tomorrow.”

 

With that, she's gone down the aisle. He's flabbergasted to say the least, but before he says anything, he gets a pointed stare from Jamia. “Huh. She's usually not that straightforward.”

 

He pulls a face. “Uh… maybe she just _sensed_ what a nutjob I am.”

 

Jamia smiles. “It takes one to know one, that's for sure.” She strolls towards the checkout line. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she's a witch. Being the only cool slash occult goth lady in town earns you a bad rep around here. Kids were afraid of me because I liked her.”

 

“Are you sure that it was the only reason?”

 

That earns Gerard an elbow in the ribs.

 

*

 

The reason Gerard’s never encountered Ms. May’s home is because it's settled on the outer edge of town.

 

It’s practically in the forest- two giant oaks on each side of the tall, thin house. The church and the cemetery are about three minutes away from it, but other than that, Ms. May seems to have no neighbors at all. It explains why Gerard’s never seen her before, as well.

 

The house itself is all dark stone and black pointed arch windows, the roof sharp with a round chimney. The front door is massive and filled with little arabesque-like carvings, and when they ring the bell- Gerard swears he can hear crows cawing from somewhere.

 

Ms. May serves Gerard the tea she promised him in the dimly lit living room. It’s in an antique silver cup with purple flowers that match the violet of the dark velvet curtains. It’s strange, it tastes like cinnamon, and a little bit like chamomile- but other than that, he can't identify the flavor. Ms. May tells Jamia to go upstairs to her study and fetch the books she's prepared for her- a cat as white as moonlight enters the living room as Jamia leaves it.

 

A snow-white cat dances around Gerard’s legs as Ms. May talks about the weather and tea. Gerard strokes the fur on its neck with his thumb and smiles slightly when the cat purrs.

 

“You like cats,” it doesn't sound like a question, but it probably wasn't meant to, either. The cat climbs into Gerard’s lap and it takes him by surprise, but he recovers as swiftly as it came. “His name is Onegin, and he's a real bitch, to be honest.”

 

_“ Onegin_ _?”_ It's a bit ridiculous, even he has to admit.

 

“He goes by ‘Eugene’, too,” she says with a wink. Gerard can't help but to laugh at that. “My husband never understood my love for romanticism, so that's how we compromised.”

 

“Besides,” she continues, “he's a strange cat, I like to think. Even the most hard-shelled of dog people fall for his charm.”

 

“Your husband, I presume?” Gerard asks, watching Eugene try to find a comfortable position on his thighs. He has dark gray eyes and a black dot on the side of each tear duct, making him look ever-curious, and just a little bit sad.

 

“No, my nephew, actually,” she says, putting a pair of black, heavily-rimmed glasses on. “Anyways, you're wearing a Bauhaus t-shirt. This means you'll definitely want to know about that time I made out with Peter Murphy, no?”

 

Gerard almost spits out the last sip of his tea. Eugene is probably scared by the motion, so he jumps off him and disappears somewhere behind the couch. Ms. May looks really pleased with herself.

 

But then again- so would Gerard if he had the chance to make out with Peter Murphy.

 

*

 

Gerard and Jamia leave with a lot of books and a box of tea in Gerard’s deep coat pocket.

 

It's already been dark out for quite some time when they're sitting on the floor of Gerard’s room. He's got an ashtray now and his lighter still doesn't work properly, even though it's a different one. “We've been kind of ignoring the elephant in the room lately, haven't we?”

 

Gerard breathes in a large gulp of air. “My life is one big elephant in the room.”

 

“Poetic,” she snorts. “I was talking about Ryan.”

 

“He's just having a hard time,” Gerard lies through his teeth. He hates himself for doing it, but he's promised Ryan he’d stay silent for as long as he needs him to. “I know where you're coming from. I'm worried, too.”

 

Gerard feels as if everything he's saying is just following the manual, rattling the same sentences over and over again until some deity decides to have mercy on him and make them true. Perhaps it would work if he were a little more genuinely optimistic, and not just downright hopeless- but that doesn't even matter, does it? The world works in ridiculous ways and Gerard has long-abandoned the notion that his attitude can make anything better. It's what Mikey’s death has taught him and Ryan's issues are there to confirm it. Nobody has mercy towards the miserable other than nuns and nurses and Gerard doesn't trust either of those. He doesn't need redemption or Prozac- he needs answers.

  
He just needs to find someone who knows them before it's too late.


	12. Such An Asshole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello people! i'm back. i'm so sorry, but my life has been so hectic that i didn't even realize it's almost been a year since i've updated this thing. i'll do my best to finish it, i promise. for both you and for me. if you stuck around, you're absolutely the best, but it's cool, too if you didn't- i don't blame you.

Ryan’s hair seems particularly golden on a foggy December morning.

He's in a coat similar to Gerard’s, maybe a bit more military-style, and Jamia is wearing a black skirt she once swore would never leave her closet again. Gerard doesn't know if it's appropriate to wear Docs to church, but his mother told him if he's already going, he might as well be a bit of a rebel whilst he's at it.   
He doesn’t really know why he’s there. Distraction, perhaps, might be the best fitting answer. A part of him still hopes that maybe at least some of his three thousand sins won’t be able to cross the shiny threshold.

It’s a small church, all brown and bronze inside, eyes of saints staring down at him from the paintings hung on the walls. The floor is cold marble, the pews a warm dark wood. He shifts uncomfortably at how the light pours in through the tinted glass windows. It’s bordering on eerie, as if a looming dark presence came to watch over him, casting blood red shadows on the people surrounding him. Perhaps the corridor will swallow him whole as he walks towards the altar.

“Merry Christmas,” says Ryan’s dad when they meet him. He’s a man of few words and many, many wrinkles. Gerard knows his eyes, though, there is not a single dishonest speck in the milky brown- just like his son’s. Gerard smiles.

It’s a haunted setting, he concludes. Everything here reminds him of his own wrongdoings. It’s a shame the regret stays even after all these years he hasn’t stepped foot in a church. He feels like he might be the ghost of his own Christmas past. The present feels too plastic anyway, and the future… Don’t worry about the future soon became you have no future at all and getting out of that mindset is too much of a leap out of his comfort zone. Perhaps the setting isn’t haunted after all… perhaps it is just him.

It’s strange. He’s become so used to the half-life, hazy and floating through time and space between himself and the next season of the year. Everything blooms, Gerard fades. Concrete fumes- Gerard fades. Downpours… Gerard fades. Each time everything dies again, he hopes he might fade away completely. It hasn’t happened yet. He still hasn’t given up.

He’s jittery during the mass. There’s something in the air that’s making him nervous. It’s not the people. It’s not the gospel despite the guilt it stirs in the pit of his stomach… it’s the feeling of being watched in a room full of people. As if all the shadows on the floor are a part of a single entity that’s chasing him and him only. That’s ridiculous, obviously, but there’s something very real behind his irrational paranoia…   
He’d look around if he wasn’t anxious it’d be someone he wasn’t expecting.

“Cheer up, soldier,” comes from behind him. Gerard chokes on his own saliva. “Sorry I scared you. You just looked like someone broke your favorite toy. Oh, and, merry Christmas I guess.”

His rambling gave Gerard some time to collect himself. “Merry Christmas, Pete. I’m uh- kind of- not… sad? I mean. I’m fine. Just absent. Mentally.”

Pete Wentz grins. “Eloquent is how I like them.”. Gerard blinks twice, trying to process. Was he flirting with him? “I’ll give you a minute to come back to Earth. Where were you? Halloweentown?”

Gerard snorts at that. It’s so much easier to talk to someone when they aren’t expecting eye contact. “Ah, my hometown, yes.” Someone shushes them from the front pew. Gerard immediately stiffens.

Pete looks amused. “He can joke, everyone! An extravaganza!”

Gerard snickers. The guy is so awfully loud, it’s ridiculous; but there's something comforting about it. He isn’t sure why Pete is talking to him, though- it seems slightly counterproductive to befriend someone who’s willingly kissed your arch enemy. There isn’t any way of Pete knowing that, he’s aware, but his thought process wasn’t very logical to begin with, either. Sometimes it seems to him that people can sense things like those. However, the least he can do is try to be polite.

“Stop nagging Gerard,” Jamia hisses from behind them.

Pete faces her and rolls his eyes. “Don't get your panties in a twist, honey, I can't always give you my undivided attention.”

Her face scrunches up in a horrific expression, somewhere between amusement and disgust. If he weren't so aware of his surroundings, Gerard would crack up on the spot.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll survive. This poor boy is who I’m worried about,” she points a chipped black fingernail at Gerard. “He’s too innocent for your presence. Scoot.”

Pete snorts. “Is he now?”

Gerard sighs, bubbles of nerves and laughter popping inside the pit of his stomach. “If you're done talking about me like I’m not here, can we focus our energy on not getting kicked out of church?”

A mother of two sitting in the pew beside him looks at him with gratitude. He tries to smile at one of the children looking at him with glossy, dark eyes. The kid bites her lip and looks away.

“Okay, but only because he asked me to,” Pete sticks his tongue out at Jamia before he turns his head towards the friar.

*

The fog hasn't gone down. There's this feeling inside his bones going well with the cold around his fingertips, almost numb around the filter of his cigarette. He doesn't like smoking with gloves on. There's just something wrong about it, he can't even explain it. It seems even sillier at times like these when he's practically freezing his fingers off for a moment of finesse.

There's nobody other than him in the church garden, he thinks. Everyone has left after mass and Gerard couldn't stand to go somewhere too warm and full of people: those spaces make his thoughts melt into each other, too many voices and faces and everything becomes a mess. He doesn't like feeling like he doesn't know himself.

He feels guilty for not being with his friends on Christmas. He’d declined his mother’s offer to join her for the Christmas banquet her boss has thrown- she deserves to wind down and he’d only be an unnecessary setback. He presumes it isn't a big deal, though, he’ll find Ryan and Jamia later. Now he just needs a moment for himself.

He breathes in the icy air, leaving a prickly void inside his throat. He likes the feeling of winter mornings when everything is slowed down to an almost numbing pace- even the clouds seem to be floating through the sky in a lazier manner.

“Your cigarette has burned out.”

Gerard drops it, almost instinctively. The voice vibrates through him like an electric shock, his back going from hunched to stiff immediately.   
Frank is standing by a bench a few meters away from the one Gerard is sitting on. His leather jacket-clad shoulders don't seem to be strained from the cold, face pale and nose blushing below his wide eyes. His hair has curled past his ears now, naturally brown and warm, a ‘Dead Milkmen’ pin stuck to the rim of his beanie. He’s wearing black jeans and combat boots, forehead lacking the furrow often etched between his eyebrows.  
Gerard doesn't want to admit it to himself, but every fiber of his body is glad he’s there.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

The laugh that escapes Gerard is sour. Rotten, bitter at the edges. He wishes he could be a bit less transparent, a bit more nonchalant- it's not good to be this vulnerable and openly so. There's just something about Frank that exposes everything inside of him, everything he keeps successfully bottled up most of the time. Those things are so well hidden inside countless drawers of his mind, locked, with the key flushed alongside bathwater and everything painful. But when Frank comes along, it’s like the drawers were made of dark matter that just collapses into itself and leaves everything out in the open for the vultures to take.

Frank doesn't sit until Gerard shakes his head.

“I can't be mad at you for being friends with Pete Wentz now, can I?”

Gerard hates his guts. “No,” his voice is quiet, but he knows Frank hears it. “You fucking can't.”

“Wish I had an excuse,” it’s practically a mumble. Gerard doesn't like it when people talk to themselves in front of him.

“It's like you do it on purpose,” Gerard says.

“Do what?” _He’s such an asshole_.

“That. You're being a jerk. I hate that,” Gerard would usually watch the things coming out of his mouth. He doesn't know why the filter suddenly disappeared, but he likes being able to voice his thoughts without fear for once. Maybe he feels like with Frank, he's got nothing to lose.

Frank smiles, almost fondly. _Such. An. Asshole._ “I never had a reason not to be before.”

“Before?” Frank looks at him. There's something in his eyes, but he doesn't say anything. “Okay, but how about being a decent human being?”

Frank stares off into the distance, putting a cigarette between his lips. His hands have that familiar curve to them as he lights it. Long pause, and an exhale of smoke into the space in front of him. “I wish I could tell you everything.”

It catches Gerard off guard. It's an innocent statement at first glance, but one you wouldn't expect to hear from him. Gerard doesn't know what he means, but a part of him understands what Frank is trying to say. It makes something warm spark up in his lungs, his neck- a comfort he hasn't felt in weeks. “You can start by telling me _something_.”

Frank bites his bottom lip. He looks at him with an expression Gerard never saw before, fearful, timid- his anger starts melting despite his best efforts for it to stay. The truth is, Gerard wants to be pissed. He deserves to be, because Frank keeps leaving him to question everything all the time, making him long for something he isn't even sure exists. He makes him forget all things strange and wrong that have been plaguing his life for months now, replacing it with a twisted sense of anticipation. He can't shake the feeling that it's all connected, and it scares him.

“I’m no good, Gerard.” They all say it, but he seems to mean it. “There are things about me that I can't explain. Things you don't want to know.”

“But that’s the thing, Frank, I want to know.” He says it the same way he thinks it: hastily and unfiltered. It doesn't matter.

“How can you be so sure?” He looks at him pointedly.

“Jesus Christ.” How do you tell someone you want to know everything? That you don't care? Or rather, that you care more than you can comprehend? “You exhaust me.”

Frank's giggle is honest. Gerard hates the way it makes him feel. “I’m sorry.”

Before he can tell himself not to, he scoots closer to Frank on the bench. He leans his head on Frank’s chest, he can feel his muscles tense before he relaxes into it. “I can't believe I’m being like this,” he mumbles into the cool leather of Frank’s jacket. “I’m such an idiot.”

“You are,” Frank says into his hair. Gerard can feel one of Frank's arms curling around his shoulders. “I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

And somehow, that seems to be enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i'll try to make the next one longer)


	13. 26th December Dread

_Cold. Dark. Alone._

_There's someone in his bed. He can hear them breathe through the fabric of his comforter, jagged and unafraid. The air is black when he opens his eyes, he can't see the ceiling. He's been holding his breath for a minute now and his chest feels like it might implode any second._

_A movement in the sheets. Gerard knows it isn't him because he's paralyzed. His feet are stuck to the bed, stiff and freezing in the winter night. He's bitten his lip enough to draw blood, enough to choke on it because of his sporadic, shallow inhales._

_A growl somewhere below him. He can feel prickles in his spine, in his shoulder blades, the inside of his nose sticky and draggy as he fights for oxygen. There's something in his eyes, between his lashes, in the crevices of his teeth: black, gooey, demonic- it tastes like cotton candy and nightmares and the laughter of dead children.  
A rip through his lower back. The scream that comes out of his throat isn't even there, it's choked by the tar coating his tonsils._

_The thing is inside his mattress._

*

“You’re saying he just _vanished_?”

Gerard can't do this. Head hung, shallow breaths leaving his mouth and the heaviness of hopelessness tight across his ribcage. He's lost so much before and he shouldn't have to do it again. Pictures of Mikey on his deathbed are playing in his head like a nightmarish silent movie. No matter how much air he inhales, it’s like the oxygen in it is so sparse that his head in only getting cloudier with each breath. There's a sick feeling inside the pit of his stomach that tells him Ryan hasn't just gotten lost in the woods.

“I’m saying I don’t _know_ , Gerard!” Gerard jumps at Jamia’s agitated voice. He doesn’t even realize he’s been shaking until she grabs his hand. “I didn't mean to yell. I’m just… God, I hope he’s safe. The search party will be sent out any minute now.”

“They're not going to find him.” He can't afford to be a crybaby but he can't help it. There's too much panic flooding his veins, more frenzy than anything else. He’s jealous of Jamia’s composure, even if she is snappy at certain things- she seems a lot more stoic than he is, more assertive about finding him- Gerard wishes he had the same quality to him. “We should go looking for him. You said you last saw him by the factory. Maybe he went inside and got stuck. Maybe he got hurt. Or maybe…”

The blank look inside Gerard’s eyes tells Jamia what he’s thinking about. She hates it, and he can tell. “ _No_.” She seems like she has been convincing herself just enough so that her ‘no’ can be as resolute as she wants it to.

“How do you fucking know? He had the nightmares, or whatever they were. I’ve seen it. This isn't just some prank, I’m positive. That thing is out there and it got him.” The tone of his voice is borderline insane, he can hear it reverberating through the room in a haunted backlash of everything he doesn’t want to be thinking about. He can't even form a sentence that doesn't sound crazy, his voice breaking around his syllables like an old recorder. “This is not a coincidence. If anything, he’s-”

With rushed, loud footsteps, Pete walks into the room. Gerard lets his unfinished sentence hang in the air, thick and dry in all of its hastiness. Pete sits on one of Jamia’s old armchairs and puts his head in his hands. His tattered parka is stretched across his hunched shoulders, dark hair messy and falling across his forehead in thick strands. “I can't believe this is happening.”

Gerard’s mother left him at Jamia’s to go to the police when they’d knocked at their door at three PM sharp on St. Stephen’s Day, just as Gerard was about to finish his small plate of post-lunch gingerbread cookies. The usually sweet honey pepper only left bitterness in his mouth this time round.

“What did they say? Any clues as to where he might’ve gone off to?” Gerard doesn’t mind Jamia speaking for the both of them. He finds it even harder than usual to be coherent, as if every word that leaves his mouth is a piece of his sanity abandoning his body. He isn’t sure if it’s worth it hanging onto the leftovers at this point. “Were you at the station?”

Pete nods. Mr. Wentz is the local chief of the police, a grim man with an overgrown beard and the darkest eyes Gerard’s ever seen. He is intimidating to say the least, with shoulders that could fit twice the ones of Gerard’s, and a look that makes you bite your tongue before you speak to him. Regardless of that, he is probably the most capable man in town- and if anyone’s able to get first-hand information, it’s him. “They’ve got nothing yet.”

The smell of old, clean carpets and anticipation is sharp in the air, cutting through Gerard’s nostrils with its detergenty staleness. It’s making Gerard nervous, as if he weren’t scratching both of his wrists enough as it is- a habit that’s been fading softly throughout the weeks leading up to this incident. He was so proud of himself whenever he’d look at the scabless forearm, but he supposes feeling bad about it now is pointless. There are other things he can beat himself up over- besides, he can always start again once they find Ryan.  
He looks out of the window as he feels nausea creeping up his stomach, familiar knots just tying around each other in perfect curves to make a bigger one. It is getting dark outside, and the thought of what might be lurking in the shadows makes him throw up in his mouth a little.

“Gerard, your face is green,” Pete looks at him, worry creasing his forehead. Gerard doesn’t respond, just washes down the acidic flavor down his throat with a gulp of water. “Maybe you should stay here and rest.”

He is about to protest, but Jamia cuts in. “We can’t leave him alone.”

“I know Ms. May is on house watch since her house is close to the factory,” Pete says, and Gerard involuntarily perks up at the mention of the woman’s name, “we can ask her to make him some tea? I think it might help.”

At this point, Gerard doesn’t even mind that they’re talking like he isn’t there. He’s too caught up in his own uneasy state, and besides, they wouldn’t even care if he were to rebel against anything they’d decided. In all honesty, the last thing he’d want is to is jeopardize the search party finding Ryan as quickly as possible. There’s a tinge of pride in the colossal black hole of his anxiety that applauds him for being able to stay rational about this, and he’s trying to hold onto it as tightly as his weak, metaphorical arms allow.

“She loves Gerard, she’ll probably be thrilled,” Jamia agrees. Then she looks at Gerard, almost guiltily when she realizes they’ve been practically ignoring his presence. A part of him wishes he was more bothered about it than he is. “Are you okay with that, Gee?”

He closes his eyes, sipping some more water. He tries to make his words sound more collected than his thoughts. “I don’t care as long as you find him,” he speaks weakly. It’s not much, but it’s the best he can do- Ryan always said that was more than enough. Jamia nods.

_Says_ , he decides. _Says_.

*

They’re walking down the wide street, chestnut trees on each side of the road, looming over tall black lamps and casting blurred yellow light on the damp pavement. Gerard feels like his shadow is walking faster than he is, caught up in the desperation of everything around him and a paralyzing anxiety passing through every nerve in his body.

Jamia clears her throat, Pete looking at her funnily because she interrupted their discussion to turn to Gerard. “I don’t know why I forgot to mention this, but…” Her face is unreadable. “You do know that Ms. May is Frank’s aunt, right?”

Gerard stops. The words drift in slow motion from his ears to his brain, and in that second even the air around him seems to have lazed its movements. The notion is so blurry in his head before it starts to sharpen, and if Gerard had a sharpie in his coat pocket he could mimic the way he’d connected the dots in his head then and there. The realization tickles somewhere underneath his skin, like a silent albeit humorous ‘fuck you’ to everything he knows about this strange little town and its inhabitants, more of whom he’s growing more fond of as days go by. It’s a weird time to be feeling like this, with the hole of Ryan’s disappearance fresh and gaping inside his chest. It takes him a moment to recuperate, eyes wide and utterly confused, but then he starts cackling. It’s only slightly hysterical, he can’t help it being that way because no honest laughter can escape him while Ryan is gone, but the absurdity of the situation simply calls for him to laugh. “Of course,” he says, inhaling as deep as he can. “I should’ve figured.”

Pete looks only slightly disturbed by his outburst, but he remains silent. If Jamia feels the same, she doesn’t let it show. Knowing her, she’s grown used to Gerard’s quirks by now, perhaps even fond of them- if he’s lucky. “I had to say it because I don’t know if you even like him. And, you know…” she looks uncertain. “He might… well, be there.”

Gerard exhales, letting everything settle down in his mind again. He tightens his coat around him, walking faster and prepares to utter the biggest understatement he’s ever said. Lying isn’t his strongest suit. “Uh…” he ignores Pete who raises a thick eyebrow, suspicious. He averts his eyes before he can crumble underneath the look. “He’s fine, I guess.”

*

Standing on Ms. May’s porch, Gerard feels a little calmer.

Maybe it’s the familiar, warm darkness the house almost vibrates with, or just the smell of chimney smoke in the air; he doesn’t know, but questioning might ruin it so he catches himself on time. He knocks on the door three times and it takes only a moment before Ms. May opens it. Her silver locks are in a braid falling over her shoulder, Eugene in her arms and clawing at her thick, woolen sweater in Prussian blue. She smiles softly, eyes rimmed with crow’s feet, eyeliner and empathy, and Gerard feels like he might cry like he did when he was younger on his mother’s chest.

She takes his hand, not saying a word, and leads him to the parlour where he lets Eugene hop into his lap. She gently taps his back as she offers him something- a box of Amazonian chocolate truffles- before she nears the stove to put on the kettle. A small part of him wonders if Frank was the one who opened the box, but he doesn’t let himself mention him in front of her. He isn’t ready to have that conversation yet. “You can have the rest of them if you want to. I know how good they are.”

He smiles as Eugene noses his thigh. “Thanks.” His voice is wavered, bleak, but it’s simply because he doesn’t know how to connect his thoughts with his words at this moment. He would rather not speak at all. He thinks about Ryan, and then about Frank, the endless pit of anticipation and worry forgotten for millisecond moments when he remembers Frank might be nearby.

He still doesn’t know where they stand, or if they stand at all. Maybe they’re walking, falling, running- everything feels uncertain when he’s with him.

Not everything, he tells himself, mouth full of almonds and dark chocolate, fingers running through the fur on Eugene’s back. Perhaps he can compare Frank to a tide that only comes at certain hours and disappears in the others, but something inside you knows it will be back at the same time tomorrow. Then again, Frank is not as predictable as a tide, nor is he ruled by anything, not even the Moon, it seems.

Gerard scolds himself for thinking about Frank when he should be out, searching for Ryan instead. He doesn’t know why he agreed to staying put in the first place (he does, he’s aware that he’d only be a burden rather than an aide). Exasperation leaves his body in a huff through the mouth, replaced by emptiness carving its way out of his torso and throughout all four of his limbs.

“It’s hojicha and cacao,” Ms. May says, “it should help your state.” She lights a mauve candle beside the stove and sits beside him, elbows on the table. Pink and brown crystals hanging around her neck are leaning against the tablecloth, softly. “You know he is alive, don’t you?”

Gerard looks at her. Perfectly calm, the exact opposite of everything he is feeling- her sole presence makes his breathing slower, whether he likes it or not. “How are you so sure?”

“Certain things I just know,” she takes his hand in hers, slowly, as if she’s trying to ask for permission. Her skin is soft and the pearl-colored tip of her fingernail traces the lines on the inside of his palm. “A double heart line…” she smiles with her her eyes. “Someone’s watching over you.”  
In his head, Mikey’s picture appears: a pointy nose and thoughtful gaze through his glasses, cheerful grin of his straight teeth. He exhales in a long, calmer manner.  
“He’s with you, you know? It can’t hurt you- he won’t let it.”

Gerard doesn’t ask how she knows. He just lets himself be grateful that she does- it’s all he has at this point, and it’s enough to put him at ease for now. The answers? They can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told u  
> also please tell me if you’re still reading this thank u

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Coffee and Advil [a fan mix]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4726601) by [bloodofinnocence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodofinnocence/pseuds/bloodofinnocence)




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